


The (de)Merits of Positive Reinforcement

by Angramainyus



Series: things you love that do not love you back [1]
Category: Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types, Rockman.EXE | Mega Man Battle Network
Genre: AI Morality 101 And You!, Artificial Intelligence, CossackTried.png, Every Single Scientist At Scilabs Besides Cossack and Hikari Were Assholes 10 Years Ago, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Nobody Loves Him Is A Bad Idea; A Case Study, Now With A Future Crash Course In Destruction And Murder, Pre-Alpha Forte is a Nerd, Pre-Canon, Reasons Why Convincing An Obsessive Computer Program Who Can Destroy You All
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 10:58:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1896489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angramainyus/pseuds/Angramainyus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Cossack beamed down at him from his window.</p><p>“An enthusiastic welcome, doctor,” Forte bowed his head in a quiet greeting, his cheeks flushed.</p><p>Unashamed, Cossack tugged at his beard and leaned back in his swivel chair. “You are my greatest creation. My child. A man is allowed to be excited about the culmination of his efforts after so many long months, wouldn't you say?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. let's assume the lion is smiling

**Author's Note:**

> Several sections of the dialogue between Forte and Cossack are either paraphrased, or outright taken from either the Forte + Serenade manga sidestory, or from Forte's backstory chapter in the Rockman.exe manga by Ryo Takamisaki. (Aka the first few lines Cossack says to Forte in the first portion, and the very first quote he says to him in the second portion.)
> 
> (This is unbetad, since I don't have anybody to beta for me so my sincere apologies for that.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the beginning, before what was to come, there had been somebody who had called Forte his son.

**1.**

His audio recording program came online first before everything else.

Before the NetNavi could see, before he could move, before he could speak, he could _hear_.

There was no sight, no awareness of possessing a physical form, only a thick, muffling void of black that muted any attempts he might have mounted to properly comprehend his situation. And within that void, it was solely the sounds that transmitted to him that assured the NetNavi he wasn’t experiencing some kind of strange, deliberating bug.

Blind and disembodied, he waited in the darkness and listened keenly to the outside stimulus that poured in: mechanical whirring, the sound of shuffling paper materials on what he presumed to be a flat surface, and an electronic humming in the distant background. A steady beeping came from an unidentified source.

 

 

 _Beep, beep, bee-eep_...

 

 

Then, the noise of practiced fingers rapidly typing away at a keyboard trickled in.

It was all sharp and clear to his ears, providing a multitude of details that a human being would easily missed. (Any scientist worth their salt would been astounded by the volume of data he could process, the probability matrixes and scenario projections and calculations that would have reduced the most devoted human mathematicians to confused gibberish that he could run, even in this half-aware, premature state between full activation and shutdown. Of course, the NetNavi didn’t know this. He didn’t know this and he didn’t care to.)

But it was still insufficient. It wasn’t enough. It didn’t satisfy him. He wanted to know more, somehow. Everything, such as the data streaming in, was detached and remote, like styrofoam had been wrapped snugly over the rest of the NetNavi’s senses. Determined to diagnose the source of his troubles, he dispatched a quick self-diagnostic scan. Nanoseconds later, the gist of the resulting error report pinged back to him said: _all main systems clean of abnormalities, all necessary components online. Emotion simulation program, online. Audio recording program, online. Visual recording program, offline. Sensory program, offline. Speech program, offline. Linguistic comprehension module, online. All vital core programs operating at functional levels. Progress of installing final coding and protocols at 78%, status incomplete. Please remain in standby._ He accepted it as it was without a second’s thought, never doubting its accuracy. But it was too bare on specifics for him to take action immediately.

 _Status incomplete_ , the NetNavi repeated it to himself and rolled the phrase over in his mind, grappling with it.

What did it mean to be... incomplete? He didn’t know. Cocooned within the black void, subroutines kicked in for the first time in response to the new information he was compiling and he frowned slightly, the corners of his mouth curving downward, displeased at his utter lack of knowledge. His forehead crinkled.

The typing noises at the keyboard stopped.

It occurred to him then that he had a face with _which_ to frown. Or, to be more exact, that the awareness and feeling in his digital frame had just came online. He could now manipulate his frame, move it. He paused. Was this good? Was this bad? That was a good outcome, he decided after a nanosecond. What had triggered it?

He stirred, drawing closer to full consciousness. Bit by bit, programs engaged with their given purposes and started running.

A voice spoke to him. And the NetNavi processed and heard it, translating the sounds into the first words spoken to him, the words with which he was introduced to life;

“There is nothing to be afraid of.”

A fuzzy jolt of surprise ran through him. He ‘started,’ struggling to respond, wanting to respond but lacking the means to do so. He wasn’t _afraid_ , he wanted to protest indignantly. Just incomplete, whatever that meant. Why would this voice imply otherwise! But the reassurance and the unfamiliar warmth in the voice’s tone stopped him.

The voice added gently, “I’m right here.”

Heat rose up in his face. The warmth of the voice soothed him. His internal databanks contained no matching information to use as a reference to comprehend it, but that _warmth_ … It was definitely directed at him. There was no feasible way anything filled with that warmth would mean him harm. He didn’t have any logical basis for why he immediately came to that conclusion nor solid evidence for it; it merely seemed to be the correct one to arrive at. He didn’t try to contest it.

The typing noises resumed for a moment, ending with a final, satisfied click. “Here, open your eyes—”

Then, _finally_ ; his visual recording program activated. Color instantly flooded into the darkness at last, bringing with it light and the perception of depth. Vague shapes defined themselves through his eyelids. What were they?

The voice continued, the happiness that this moment brought him audible in his very words, “—my beloved child.”

 

His eyes slide open for the first time.

 

Incandescent rings of data orbited him, nearly nausea-inducing and blinding in their brightness before his vision adjusted. Pixels fragmented away from his body and lazily drifted around the black NetNavi in clouds. Uncertain of his current location, he blinked sleepily, automatically utilizing movement subroutines that would help in conveying that confusion and that general ‘ _I just booted up, give me a moment to adjust_ ’ sentiment to a human should he chose to converse with them.

The status bar that ran in the foreground above him blinked from red to green.

Slowly, he turned his head to the side: dozens of spheres of light shone around the computer area, fixed in place. Not the primary sources of light, but providing a great deal of it. He drank in the sight, hungry for more.

Then he looked up in front of him, blearily fixing his gaze on the screen floating several feet away from him and the face of the middle-aged human displayed upon it. “You…” he muttered softly, trying to access his databanks for a name to match to the owner of the kind, friendly voice. Male, its timbre had told him. Not young either, said the absence of the higher pitch an adolescent human would have possessed.

“You’re Dr. Cossack,” he remembered when he succeeded. A heartbeat later, the name was followed by recollection of what the man’s connection to himself was. It clicked smoothly into his newborn understanding of reality.

“My creator.”

Dr. Cossack’s cheery smile grew wider, if that was possible. His short beard twitched with the movement of his lips. “Yes. That’s correct, Forte. Hello. It’s a pleasure to be formally introduced to you at last.”

Forte appraised him openly through the clouds of pixels floating around him, not sure what to do or what exactly was expected of him. (He had so little in the way of data that dealt with the department of social interaction, much less with the one who was responsible for giving him life.) “Same here, Dr. Cossack.”

There was a moment of silence, save for the soft whirring of the supercomputer’s fans and the background droning of cyberspace, before curiosity overpowered him and the black NetNavi awkwardly ventured a question.

“Excuse me, but where am I exactly?”

“You’re in the cyberworld of Scilabs.”

“What’s ‘Scilabs?’” Forte questioned innocently. “Where is it located?”

Dr. Cossack rested his hand on the table’s surface, next to the worn keyboard, and with the air of somebody reciting by rout said, “Electopia, my dear boy. It’s a government-sponsored scientific institution, dedicated to the study and advancement of modern technology for the betterment of network society.”

He slowly digested this new information, dissected it, filing it away into appropriate files in his nearly-empty memory log and saving them to be accessed later and properly reviewed. _Electopia. Scientific institution. The betterment of network society_. Forte presumed some of that had to do with why he had been created.

“... —I see,” he mumbled. “I think?”

The grainy, muffled quality filling his skull hadn’t vanished yet. It made thinking clearly into a messy task that had to be marshalled into order. Thoughts came slowly and flittered, darting about in a manner similar to a swarm of flinches trapped in a small cage. Forte’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. He didn’t _like_ it.

“I’m glad about that, but we’re not in a rush here, Forte,” Cossack reassured him, seeing Forte’s current difficulties in fully grasping what he was being told. As of that moment, he hadn’t yet completed the on-going progress of installing the NetNavi’s final coding. It wasn’t too hard to make an intuitive leap and realize that was impairing Forte’s present ability to operate.

“If you don’t completely comprehend something, feel free to ask me as many times as necessary.”

Jerkily, Forte nodded to demonstrate that he acknowledged and appreciated his creator’s thoughtfulness. He paused. Possibilities belatedly occurred to him. _Movement_. He had just nodded his head, hadn’t he? Forte had taken the information he had at hand, processed it, imputed an action in response to Dr. Cossack’s words, and the result was that he had moved his body under his own will. Oh.

Forte felt the faint weight of the finned helmet on his head, and knew, if he cared to, he could have lifted his hand too, curled all but one of his digits, and ran a finger along the blunt edge of one of the black fins. That much was well within his power, he was certain.

A small thing to be pleased by, but pleased Forte was.

Prompted by this thought, Forte’s gaze slid downward to examine the rest of himself. From his thighs down, the black material covering himself disappeared in tiny hexagonal patches, exposing a bare frame which glowed dimly purple. His left hand from just below the elbow was similarly unfinished. Judging from the single finished gauntlet—gold and _more_ black, Forte was sensing a definite color theme here, which wasn’t to say that he had any problems with that—grafted around his right forearm, the thick, clunkier bits of his limbs were intended to be protective armour pieces. How useful.

Painstakingly careful, he reached up and touched his right hand to the side of his face; there was no sensation of skin texture that greeted his fingers, only more bare digital framework.

It prickled strangely to the touch.

Pressing them down harder and running them across the patch of bare framework, his fingers explored the smooth indent where pre-loaded information informed him he should have another ‘eye’ to match the single red pupil Forte already could blink and see with. Like Dr. Cossack’s eyes, green as some of the electronic data spiraling steadily around him. Speaking of Dr. Cossack...

“I am unfinished,” finally settling on a satisfactory response, he pulled his hand away from his face and addressed the doctor. Now that he could review his systems adequately, if not at the most rapid pace, Forte found the thought distressing. He did not want to be incomplete though he didn’t know why. On some level, the very idea revolted him.

“Why is that?” he asked, almost insistantly. “I don’t understand that.”

“Think of this like a beta test,” the man said comfortably. It wasn’t an uncommon standard procedure to prematurely activate a NetNavi during its initial programming to check that its systems were running correctly. It saved the trouble of having to shut down and rewrite a complex program from scratch when you discovered what worked just fine in theory, didn’t do so in practice. Reality was harsh like that. “So that you’ll be in top form when it comes time for your actual debut.”

“Uhm?” Forte’s curiosity was roused. The man couldn’t help but think of it as, in a way, endearing, seeing how successfully his programming allowed the NetNavi to make a superficially unnecessary, a _human_ -like noise like that.

“Would you please clarify further, doctor?”

And that was a spark of _unprompted_ curiosity, he noted, since Cossack himself had not indicated Forte should inquire deeper about it. The man mentally chalked it down as a good sign, quite promising. Fledging steps towards the independence the doctor was hoping for from this NetNavi.

“I didn’t want to place you in a wholly new situation without some prior preparation,” Cossack confided to him. “An initial activation is certainly a confusing enough event without you encountering a harmful error and needing to be shut down for fixing it.”

Well, that, and the fact that creating a NetNavi genuinely independent of humans was starting to tread into utterly unexplored waters of research for artificial intelligence. It was a first. Cossack believed in avoiding needless complications when going into unknown territory. He was a practical man though perhaps an overly-optimistic, proud and hard-headed one at this point in his life. Employing some basic precautions hopefully go a long way to smoothing an already-difficult road.

“I suppose that’s true… ?” the NetNavi deliberated quietly, wondering about what the man was getting at. It appeared that the things about this situation which had been vexing Forte in their oddness had been implemented for his own safety. That’s what Dr. Cossack was saying. And well, Forte understood what a beta test meant at least.

He unabashedly concluded the point in Dr. Cossack’s favor. Forte tilted his head. “Was that why there was a time delay between my activation and my programs coming online?”

A nod.

“Yes, you see, Forte, I activated your programs one by one. So that in the unlikely case one of them malfunctioned in the progress, it would be a simple matter to locate the corresponding error and repair it,” Dr. Cossack explained patiently.

Forte turned that over in his mind and pondered running a second, more in-depth scan to fine-comb his systems for anomalies just to set Dr. Cossack’s mind at ease. Three picoseconds later, he dismissed the thought. It would demand too much of his time. (Forte was unwilling to risk accidentally jeopardizing any other programs the doctor might have running on the supercomputer at the same time as him or even worse still, _his_ own completion. No, no. He lacked the experience that could have told him whether the risk of acting on his own would be worth the pay-off. He’d wait.)

“It didn’t disorient you, did it?” Cossack inquired worriedly.

He shook his head. “No, doctor.”

“Oh, good,” relief slipped into his tone of voice. “Speaking of which... how _do_ you currently feel, Forte?” His creator asked, returning to what he felt to be a more pressing question.

“How do I feel?” he echoed, open puzzlement appearing in his face, stalling to think. All systems were reporting normal, save for his incomplete coding, but he had an inkling that was not what Dr. Cossack was talking about. “I feel…”

The rings of data held him suspended over the ground. They didn’t block his ability to move. The newly activated NetNavi had already proved that. Forte looked downward and held up his hands in front of him, appraising them with wide eyes under the shadow of his helmet’s helm. They were—both the glowing, unfinished hand from which pixels kept sluggishly fragmenting away from, and the finished one—broad hands, with blunt fingertips and wide palms. They were _his_ hands.

Slowly, he curled them into fists, then uncurled them again. The mimicry of human knuckles shifted and flexed under the surface of his frame, a digital equivalent to bones. He… exhaled.

Just as slowly, a bold smile broke out on Forte’s lips. Yes, he could give the answer Dr. Cossack was asking of from him. He grinned happily up at his creator.

To be alive, even incomplete, was nothing short of exhilarating. “I actually feel _great_ , doctor.”

The fact that Forte was a data-based being, existing solely within a computer network, registered to him as a minor detail at the best, barely worthy of attention much less real concern. All that mattered was he was _alive_ and if the base of that life came from a complex series of 1s and 0s, why should it be any different from life that came from other sources?

The doctor laughed and adjusted his glasses, unbothered by the short pause between his question and Forte’s reply. Beaming at Forte, he said, “I’ll need to conduct several final tests to make certain everything went smoothly, just to be through, but they’ll be quick. You’ll be up and running properly in no time.”

The thin crackle of static gathered at the edges of his vision.

His eyes dulled, the impressions of phantom binary code starting to scroll down the red pupil. Vision flickered again, going hazy. Through the grey, static-filled distortion, he could see Dr. Cossack typing busily away at the computer again.

“Good night, Forte.”

 

 

Trusting his creator, Forte didn’t fight back as his awareness receded and the darkness rose up again, signifying a return to unconsciousness. Obediently, he closed his eyes. He had plenty of new data to process and he would much prefer to be more complete the next time the doctor activated him after all. Besides, Forte found he had rather liked talking to this human. He, what was the _term_ , ‘looked forward’ to their next conversation.

The black void that had pressed against his eyeballs before his visual recording program came online, welcomed him back into its folds like an old friend. He sank into it and knew no more.

.

* * *

 

.

**2.**

“Forte… —You are, in essence, the world’s first NetNavi capable of wholly independent function! A _true_ artificial intelligence that will open the way to the impending network culture!”

It was to these words, Forte opened his eyes again and blinked ‘sleep’ out of his bright red eyes. Then he blinked again. Two eyes.

He definitely had two _actual_ eyes this time. Joy!

His feet still weren’t touching the ground. Bothersome.

Unlike his prior activation, there was no time delay between his activation and his sensory programs rushing back online. No muffled, static-filled fog clouded his ability to think. Instantaneously, he saw, heard, and _felt_ , with a wonderful clarity. (He felt like he had enough energy to cope with _anything_. Do anything. Fight anything. He could get used to this. Yes, he very much could.) Everything felt crisp and fresh to Forte. He assumed this meant that the human, Dr. Cossack, had located no damaging glitches in his coding and re-activated him as promised. He looked up.

Dr. Cossack beamed down at him from his window.

“An enthusiastic welcome, doctor,” Forte bowed his head in a quiet greeting, his cheeks flushed.

Unashamed, Cossack tugged at his beard and leaned back in his swivel chair. “You are my greatest creation. My child. A man is allowed to be excited about the culmination of his efforts after so many long months, wouldn't you say?”

Forte smiled. “Right, right...”

The data streams swirling around the black NetNavi’s form dispersed and he dropped lightly to the floor, landing on his feet with a soft _thump_.

With a child’s boneless grace, he stretched his arms over his head, feeling back muscles pull accordingly. Dropping his arms to his sides and rocking back on his heels, he turned about to examine the cyberspace around him; it matched the images he’d saved earlier to his memory files perfectly without a single deviation, save for the missing clouds of floating pixels.

Nothing had really changed.

He rubbed his face with a hand, lips parting slightly in a wordless yawn. No breaks in the soft texture of skin that greeted his touch confirmed what the readings from his systems were informing him of; his coding was complete and operating at optimal capacity.

“I trust everything’s working to your satisfaction?” Dr. Cossack called, drawing his attention back to the man.

He regarded Dr. Cossack politely. This human was his creator. Pre-programmed data informed him of what it meant to _have_ a creator. It was only because of him that Forte existed at all, he knew; he owed him… (what was the appropriate reaction, he stopped a nanosecond to cross-reference his databanks, oh it was—) respect for that reason alone, didn’t he?

Not that he was fully certain _that_ meant in practice either yet. Damn. Still, he presumed respect entrailed answering his questions promptly.

“Yes, it is,” Forte affirmed.

“Excellent,” he said. There was a pause filled with scratching noises, the noise of pencil on paper, as Dr. Cossack jotted down a few notes.

Then he had to stop his note-taking, and explain what he was doing to an inquisitive Forte why he was… Sticking an odd, thin utensil onto paper and scribbling lots of markings in lead on it when he could just use the computer instead. Wouldn’t the computer be faster? Digital data was more compact than paper could ever hope to be and it never degraded.

Dr. Cossack answered. It didn’t take too much talking for the NetNavi to grasp the finer mechanics behind drawing and writing. It was quicker to access, it never had problems with uploading, and it didn’t demand the use of a keyboard. Humans _liked_ instant results like that.

 

 

They moved onto other subjects, Cossack wagging his pencil in the air as he paused to expand on a remark, Forte fumbling occasionally during the conversation but always managing to recover from his stumbles and pick up the thread of discussion again. Sunlight, vibrant and wet from the recent spring deluges of rain that had ran through the streets of the city, filtered in through the windows in the adjoining room. It painted the floor with broad bars of light; the arms of the clock ticked slowly onward as the minutes wore on.

The bright pools of sunlight slid over the tiles, warming them with its touch.

Time passed, skipping like a child over the cracks in a sidewalk. It spared no thought for the weight of the occasion.

Eventually, Forte asked about what duties he had, what work he had to do, for he was certain there was no point to creating a program unless you had a job in mind for it; what was he supposed to do? When was he supposed to begin?

 _Soon_ , possibly?

“Everything in due time,” Cossack replied. If he had been a less naturally dignified person, the NetNavi would have slumped in disappointment. The man chuckled, sympathetically. Forte was awfully transparent. It couldn’t be helped; he was so young, newly activated, and constantly forced to check his actions against the bare bones of the pre-programmed data he had loaded in order to determine his next course of action this early in his existence.

(A blank slate; also known in simpler terms as a _child_.)

He softened his voice. “Don’t look so crestfallen, Forte. You do have plenty of functions to fulfill, but we need a test-run of your anti-virus capabilities before you can do them, alright?” Forte already had knowledge of very basic concepts installed into him so he would be aware of how to function in the civilized world. Literacy, advanced mathematics, the tools he would need to navigate personal interactions in a social setting. Simple etiquette. The basics of the necessities humans required for survival. (He _had_ to know that if he was ever going to work with humans in any real capacity.) The concepts of pain and pleasure, and why one was desirable and the other was not. So forth. Awareness of his own extensive anti-virus abilities had been included in this stew of know-hows. They translated to Forte as his ‘weaponry systems,’ primed with inexhaustible ammunition and ready to go.

He clapped his hands together. “Then let’s do that right now,” he suggested, childlike frankness in his tone. Why wait? Startled, Dr. Cossack blinked, thumb and index fingers pressing together in a reflex that came without thought.

“I was planning to wait a few days first,” he cautioned.

Forte, itching to explore some of his own limits now that he had the freedom to move about in cyberspace, was undeterred by Dr. Cossack’s caution. It took several minutes of badgering and Forte’s earnest insistence that if he was going to be activated this soon, he might as well be doing something productive that would allow him to acquire more data in the meantime before Dr. Cossack finally relented on his choice of activities.

“Wait here for a moment, my boy,” he said. Dr. Cossack rose from his seat, leaving a vacant swivel chair creaking in front of the computer and a clear view of the room behind him.

 

 

Moments later, Cossack had to stoop down to grab a bunch of old, forlorn leaflets, a thick book off the floor, then a second book with several of the yellowed pages in the back missing, and shuffle them back into their places on the shelves, quietly cursing himself. Having been thoroughly engrossed in finishing up programming Forte and running the final testing sequences, he’d fallen into an old trap and neglected to keep as organized of a labspace as he normally would.

 _Where had he left that floppy disk again_? He racked his mind for the memory.

Back at the supercomputer, the black NetNavi’s head swiveled from side to side owlishly as he gazed intently at the room and at Dr. Cossack’s turned back. Before, he had not thought to inspect his creator’s surroundings in the material world. Presented with the opportunity to do so, Forte immediately seized it. What sort of place did humans like Dr. Cossack live in?

Looking at a single room might seem an insufficient starting point for understanding the material world. It didn’t stop Forte’s urge to learn, take hold of whatever new thing that was presented to him with both hands and see what he could do with it.

Upon initial observation: it was not a _large_ room.

It seemed to be warring between being an extremely messy affair and being respectably clean. Papers covered in what Forte recognized as strings of programming coding and notes invaded the table in an unorganized fashion, stains from months of coffee mugs marring its surface. More papers were trying to spill off the tops of the shelves, pinned in place only by the pieces of hardware serving as makeshift paperweights atop them. Dented cardboard boxes, duck tape eternally in the process of peeling off and half-empty, had been stuffed under the tables wherever there weren’t computer servers already taking up the space. Schematics and blueprints of some sort of futuristic chair were tacked to the walls, all of them neatly arranged and expertly labelled. Curiosity baited him to inquire into their purpose as soon as feasible yet he held his tongue.

Tidy filing cabinets were lined up against the walls to each side, a small trash can filled with crumpled wads of paper shoved into the corner. The doors were shut. The tile floor was criss-crossed with a web of thick wires and connection cables, along with the matching hardware. Some of them had been connected. Others had not. More heavy cords hung from the ceiling and plugged into other computers and the imposing supercomputer whose monitor his own face peered out of.

Forte wasn’t sure what to make of it. It didn’t look anything like the cyberworld, which was all vast space and smooth, logical grid patterns and gleaming cubic edges. Rubbing his chin, Forte considered the scene wordlessly for several long seconds before mentally shrugging to himself.

He had plenty of time. There was no need to rush trying to reach an understanding.

 

 

The tread of heavy footsteps announced Dr. Cossack was returning.

The swivel chair creaked faintly when he sat down. “This file contains a multitude of computer viruses,” he held it up, the small disk gleaming dully in the light through its plastic covering. “At the moment, they’re harmless. Researchers froze their data.”

In response to Forte’s questioning stare, he elaborated further, lifting a finger to gesture for emphasis as he talked. “We wanted sample specimens to study, you see. The majority of them were created by third-rate hackers and their like, but there’s been incidents of, hm,” the wheels of the chair squeaked crankily against the tile floor as the scientist drew it closer to the table. “The temporary term for the phenomena we’ve noticed is ‘naturally-occurring electronic organisms.’ It’s not very common, but creatures that are like viruses can form from the accumulation of bugs, even without human interference. One of my colleagues is gifted at picking them out from the ones in storage.”

Forte’s eyes never wavered from the scientist’s face.

“Oh? That’s possible?” under the light of cyberspace, his red eyes seemed to glow.

Again. Again, with that unprompted curiosity.

Cossack was pleased to indulge it. “Indeed. It’s really quite fascinating! Imagine, the kind of random chance that would be required for that to happen at all, the kind of energy necessary for it to _begin_ developing in such a direction…” he mused aloud. The fluorescent burn of the overhead lighting bleached the yellowed crown of his head almost white in its glare.

“In fact _once_ , I’ve heard some talk of an incident years ago where a mass of bugs accumulated to the point where it could mimic something comparable to an animal’s primitive intelligence. Completely by _accident_! I mean, just imagine that,” as he talked, Cossack busied himself with setting up an extra layer of protection over the portion of the network Forte was occupying and ensuring he had a system purging program on hand in the miniscule chance Forte had trouble subduing the virii. Forte watched him work, listening. Attentive.

“Of course, all viruses, be they biological or digital, evolve, change in response to stimuli. That’s been proved quite decisively...,” he continued, then lapsed to a stop belatedly.

“Ack, but I am getting off-topic,” Dr. Cossack shook his head and inserted the disk into the computer. The computer whirred, as if in complaint, then accepted the disk. “I’ll download the viruses into the computer and then let you take care of them, Да?”

The black NetNavi nodded and tensed in preparation, eager to prove himself useful to his creator. He didn’t mind that Dr. Cossack had dropped the prior subject in favor of this; Forte wanted to get a scope on what he was capable of.

He brought up his hand, fingers spread wide, before he focused and felt something shift; his forearm converted itself into a cannon. Forte held it a few inches in front of his chest and took a moment to scrutinize his new weapon. Unsurprisingly, it strongly resembled his spiked gauntlet, and the black barrel gleamed dully in the light.

In his mind, information automatically made itself known to him; Forte innately knew how much power he could put into a blast from this cannon and how to offset the recoil.

The corners of his lips tugged upward.

Cossack’s hands moved swiftly over the keyboard, punching in commands. Forte waited. Then:

“I’m finished. Here they come,” he said.

Dr. Cossack’s window abruptly shifted to the side and a little grey… thing dropped out of thin air, landing on the floor with a faint _plop_. Forte arched an eyebrow, staring at it. This was a virus? This twisted and strange thing? Yes, his senses informed him, underlying protocols muttering to how to dispose of it, how to safe-proof the systems to protect them from it. Yes, this is a virus and you would do well to delete it. For a moment, the small, blurry form remained a frozen mass of blocks then color flooded into it. Its toothy jaws gaped open, spurts of badly-done coding shooting out of its fiery body as it began to ooze in Forte’s direction.

Forte narrowed his eyes slightly at the approaching virus, calmly braced the cannon with a hand resting on its barrel and snapping the cannon up into position, aimed it directly at the approaching virus. The bright, powerful glow of energy collected at the tip rapidly, the black NetNavi firing without a flicker of hesitation as soon as he lined up a shot with his target.

The thing imploded with a squeal in a fit of smoke and fire, bits of corrupt data sent flying into the air from the explosion and then disapparating.

(A small _thrill_ jumped down Forte’s circuits, a pulsing of enjoyment so quick and gone so fast it barely registered to him.)

(He’d liked it when he’d watched the virus go up in flames, when his shot had hit its mark.)

No time was wasted in replacing the fallen viruses. More gray forms materialized in a shower of cubes and upon unfreezing, sprang at Forte in a wave as soon as they spotted him, chattering and shrieking; an ungainly crowd of what looked to be pixelated, blue turret-guns on moving platforms rolling towards him, floating fishy-looking viruses, and what on _earth_ were those little black, waddling... round things with yellow hard-helmets supposed to be anyway?

No time was wasted in deleting them.

He fired, again and again, spraying the advancing horde with more deadly bolts of energy. Viruses winked into nothing left and right, torn apart by the barrage of charged blasts. If a lucky virus got past the initial on-slaughter, it was a simple matter to mercilessly smash the thing apart with a fist or a foot.

It was the easiest thing in the world.

It’s without difficulty, _effortless_ even, and Forte assumed that was well, the point. If he was so well programmed, if he was strong, it made sense that deleting threats (even meager ones) to the network would be no challenge. Soon the cyberspace had been handily emptied of viruses and the protective firewalls that been set up had also acquired several new, bold decorative statements in the form of blackened scorch marks.

“Whoa…”

Forte eyed the haphazard patches of devastation scattered over the firewalls, a wisp of smoke curling out of the cannon’s barrel. Carefully, he lowered the weapon and silently allowed his forearm to reform itself back to its normal appearance.

He turned back to the hovering data window with the face of his creator imposed upon it, seeking his opinion on his performance. Had he lived up to his expectations? Had he done well? Forte searched Dr. Cossack’s face, trying to locate an emotional expression that his facial recognition diagrams could translate, hoping for approval.

“А также сделать,” Cossack was exuberant, his grin slow and steady. “Well done.”

Forte’s cheeks tinted with red. He was happy. Something about Dr. Cossack’s cheerful praise made that strange warmth he had no name for energetically curl up and pulse inside him again and despite not fully understanding the point behind this particular facet to his programming, Forte found himself enjoying the alien sensation, wanting more of it. (He’d have identify it later, that was a given. But that was later. Not now. Now, let’s just bask in the moment of: _you did a good job_.)

“Of course,” he said, and let his arms rest at his sides. Forte felt silly. Of course he’d done well. That went without saying. Silly of him to waste computation power trying to make educated guesses beforehand. “Dr. Cossack, I have a question.”

“Fire away, my boy.”

Forte tentatively assumed that was an affirmative, and not a request that he take out his buster and shoot at him.

He didn’t really want to shoot Dr. Cossack.

“I’m under the impression that I’m supposed to take care of security issues, as part of my future duties. You know, like disposing of threats to the network,” he said. “It wasn’t hard to delete those viruses. Will it be more difficult, in the future?”

Knowledge of the future, the realization that while situations similar to this could repeat themselves, the variables involved might to be subject to later change! Viruses could become stronger, viruses could degrade, different enemies would offer different obstacles to overcome. He could grow stronger accordingly or he could not. Forte understood this on some level. He could figure out the world around him was not stagnant. Oh, Cossack was _thrilled_ with this NetNavi. A little uncertain also, true, but mostly thrilled. It was not in the scientist’s nature to think ill of something he was already well on his way to regarding as his offspring. Darker possibilities did not present themselves to him.

 

 

(Give it a few months. And a few more months and a few more and a few more. No, scratch that thought. A year. Two years. Give it five years.

Give it ten years.

We'll see if he's so confident then.)

 

 

“Yes, that's going to be your duties. And, well... You will find more challenging opponents to terminate in the future. I'm willing to bet on it. Let’s not worry about that right now,” he replied.

Forte assumed Dr. Cossack spoke the truth.

“Alright,” his voice was quiet as it filtered from the computer screen to Cossack. “What will you be doing with me after this?”

“You wouldn’t be taking up your duties immediately,” the man said. “I’ll introduce you to the board of directors and the rest of my colleagues, at the meeting that takes place in a week. They’ll be interested in finally seeing the results of what my project—I mean, the... Auto-Navi project, which I’m the head of—has developed. Until then, nothing big is likely to come up. I know it might be boring, but consider this a good chance to adjust and see things for yourself.”

“Mn,” Forte nodded and dropped his gaze from Dr. Cossack to the floor of the cyberspace he occupied, watching the grid of lines under his feet glow.

“Thank you. I understand.”

“Forte…”

He looked up at him again. “Yes, doctor?”

“This world is full of interesting things you are yet to know about, I assure you,” Dr. Cossack smiled crookedly. “Things much more interesting than sitting through meetings with a bunch of old men who enjoy arguing and jabbing each other in the back for things like oh, extra grant money _far_ too much. I hope... I hope you'll look forward to them."

Forte blinked, agreed by nodding vigorously despite not having the slightest idea what on earth his creator was talking about, and hoped the learning curve ahead of him also included a guidance course in "How to Interpret Human Oddities For The Woefully Ill-Informed."

(What exactly was 'extra grant money' and why would you need to jab somebody in the back to get it?)


	2. reality the way we want it to be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forte's immediate first impression of humans that weren't his creator; they liked to talk over him.

**3.**

“—And in _summary_ , there is still much, much room for future improvements. An independent NetNavi, such as Forte, would not require human intervention nor input to complete his duties,” he adjusted his glasses, pushing them further back up the bridge of his nose.

“Which I am sure we can all agree is more effective in several situations. With our cooperative efforts, may the next generation of NetNavis will be more sophisticated and allow us to strive for a better society!” standing on a podium in front of the massive screen that covered the wall behind him, Cossack wound up the tail end of his speech, laying out the possible advantages and breakthroughs he had achieved with the creation of the world’s first independent NetNavi and its self-aware artificial intelligence.  

“... Thank you for giving me your time and attention today, gentlemen,” he concluded.

A round of polite clapping broke out from the table from the other scientists and the department heads Cossack had been addressing, ringing throughout the conference room.

He’d spoken of how while the current NetNavi models demonstrate a large capacity to solve problems, complete assigned tasks and _some_ degree of individual thought, they are still heavily reliant on being operated by a human to make judgement calls and function efficiently at all. He mentioned his hope as the head scientist of the Auto-NetNavi Project, that this breakthrough should allow for the development of more customizable navis, perhaps ones even your regular, run-of-the-mill civilian could order and personally program down to its very coding to fit their needs without requiring the aide of professionals in doing so.

On the screen behind him, the silhouette of the program himself floated, a slender black outline against a blank background. Various portions of his body had been highlighted on the screen in a gradient of colors, pulsing lines indicating which of the windows of readout data, graphs and energy scales surrounding him corresponded to which part of Forte’s body.

 

“This small black thing,” one of the researchers peered closer, first at the informal sheaf of papers Cossack had provided them all with at the start of his presentation, then at the NetNavi, sharp edges and crevices dug deep into his face by the fluorescent lighting. “... Is the auto-Navi you’ve spent months developing? It’s a rather tiny model. Hardly grandiose as the time that went into it.”

“Don’t make me break out the cliches like ‘size isn’t everything,’” Cossack warned him, feathers unruffled.

He’d had built Forte to optimize his speed and high level of mobility over designing him to be a slow, immovable fortress with thick armour like the trend in current security models seemed to be heading towards. (Though he certainly hadn’t shirked off in the department of packing the potential for plenty of pure destructive force into his creation either... —Just to be on the safe side. He cared about his child after all.)

He joked lightly, “Anyway, it’ll make it that much more difficult for threats to the Alpha system to land a blow on him, if he takes up so little space, eh?”

The researcher still frowned.

“It’s not, well. Very _impressive_ , I think, that’s all. Where’s the intimidation factor?” the researcher’s lips pursed thinly.

Cossack drew himself up, shoulders squared. “His energy levels alone should be deterrent enough for any intruder thinking to test their luck, sir.”

The researcher wasn’t convinced. “With all due respect, sir, I find it hard to believe er, something that resembles a human preteen—a  _child_ can put up a convincing show of that.“ Cossack suppressed the urge to sigh in irritation.

“We’re getting off-topic. Regardless of how his appearance might color your opinions, I can assure you that Forte will live up to expectations,“ he said firmly.

There was a sound from the men around the table. It was the kind of sound one makes when one is both attentive and skeptical, and wanted to appear impartial. One fetched out a pencil stub out of a suit pocket and wrote down something. (It could have been a woefully inaccurate depiction of something uncomplimentary, or it could have simply been more scientific notes.  It was probably scientific notes.) A department head with shrewd eyes leaned forward, thin elbows resting on the table.

The researcher tipped back in his chair and looked bemused, a snappy reply teetering on his tongue.

Another scientist intervened.

“Dr. Cossack,” said Dr. Hikari, since he was addressing him in an official capacity and it wouldn’t do to call him by his first name as he usually did any of his old friends. In his hands, he too had open the explanatory packet Cossack had provided them all with for the duration of the presentation. Useful things, explanatory packets. Excellent wastes of paper. “Allow me to sate my curiosity. You’ve spoken at length of Forte’s power for the purpose of network defense and Forte’s independence, but may I ask what of his personality?”

Cossack turned to the older scientist and lifted an eyebrow. His voice came out slowly. “His… personality?”

“Yes, his personality, as you have programmed it into him,” Dr. Hikari clarified. “I would consider it of first importance. How would he handle stress, responsibility? Without an Operator to ensure his good behavior, how would he act if left to his own devices?”

Some of the other scientist’s irritation evaporated: now these were the questions he was eager to answer.

“Excellent inquiry, Dr. Hikari! I’m confident that Forte would conduct himself productively even if there was nobody giving him orders, and fulfill any electronic tasks he’d been set to as well,” he began. “He has personally demonstrated a clear grasp on taking an initiative... with or with _out_ prompting.”

Hikari persisted. “And stress? Taking your word as the current authority on this subject, how do you hypothesize Forte will fare when confronted with the stress of changing circumstances, of being faced with things he will have no prior data on and nobody to provide a substitute for that missing data?”

Cossack tsked.

“He’ll adapt by himself. Wasn’t it the aim of the Auto-Navi Project to create a NetNavi that could do that?”

“Ah, yes,” Hikari was momentarily satisfied, but that had reminded him of the other main intention behind the bulk of the project. “As well as fight all by itself. My, my. You’ve figured out how to compensate for the issue regarding the supply of Battle Chips then?”

The scientist grinned. “Indeed, I have. He has all the support he’ll need already provided.” And he didn’t elaborate beyond that.

Hikari folded his hands together, the eyes keen behind the folds of wrinkles etched into his skin by smile lines. The great number of possibilities this new NetNavi presented, the theories that could be proven correct if what his old friend was saying held true... However, as one of the heads of the laboratories, the man had to look at the possible safety issues as well. Had Cossack taken some precautions?

His voice was polite, thoughtful, and concise as he prompted him for an answer to that.

“Dr. Cossack. The programming of NetNavis is a delicate, precise science that we are still refining. Can you guarantee Forte wouldn’t become buggy, at some point?”

Cossack leaned somewhat onto the podium, like a tree listing onto a cliffside. It was more complicated than that. He knew that. Dr. Hikari knew that. But Cossack was mindful of the other sets of eyes watching them around the table. They had to keep it simple, distill it down into small terms.

He chose his words carefully.

“In this case… In most cases, we… —We have learned to accept that technology usually has problems. Machinery gets broken, computer programs encounter errors, become outdated. Systems get hacked. Hit with viruses. Sabotaged. Signals are lost. A few snippets of incorrect coding gets inserted, messing up the entire program. Malicious software gets slipped in. Ah, the dangers are endless. Modern technology—and our interactions with it remains hm, flawed,“ He quirked a friendly eyebrow at his older colleague. ”Even the Alpha system itself is not free of flaw, eh?”

Hikari chuckled, seeing the merit of the point Cossack was attempting to make. “The debugging process is a long and time-consuming one, I must admit that.”

“And you are certainly willing to devote your time to it, Hikari. The modern internet can't be built and renovated in a few days, even with a mind of your caliber,” Cossack chided him cheerfully from behind the podium, knowing full well the older man had a tendency to work all-nighters well into the late morning and the following day if he was under the impression he could get away with it.

His colleagues had taken to stationing the more gullible interns outside his door to coax him outside his laboratory with hamburgers and plaintive looks of terror at their own potential sacking, if they failed to get the genius scientist outside for food and drink as instructed.

The aging workaholic in question had the grace to look rueful at the comment.

Cossack said, “So, while I cannot guarantee he will never develop issues any more than I can guarantee any computer program wouldn’t, I’m positive that Forte can cope with unknown situations and he has the best safeguards against going haywire I can formulate. I typed his code myself. His internal firewalls are top-notch!”

A tinge of worry, as tattered and careworn as an old pair of boots, bled into Hikari’s small smile at that for a moment before he let it trickle away again.

“But let me bring back up another point you mentioned. ‘Without an Operator, how can we ensure his good behavior?’” Cossack barreled onward. “That’s how you worded it, right?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s your point?” Another member of the staff broke in impatiently, finger tapping on the papers laid out in a mosaic in front of him.

Cossack cast him an exasperated glance. The finger tapping slowed. Stopped. If a lack of noise could be described as 'sheepish,' that was it. A sheepish silence. A few others sitting at the table sighed. “I will tell you, if you would kindly let me continue…”

The staff member's face colored as he looked abashed, but not apologetic.

“Oh. Right, sorry. Carry on.”

Dr. Hikari nodded for Cossack to go on as well. He cleared his throat.

“When we assigned NetOps to NetNavis as a general rule, we ensured all NetNavis would be exposed to a consistent source of data to learn from on a regular basis,” Cossack rested his hands on the podium, palms flat against the smooth and polished surface. “So far, the results have been splendid. But... Perhaps it hindered the development of more traditional AI."

So!

“Asking how we can make sure Forte’s behavior remains good without somebody to guide him is like asking in the same breath ‘how can we make sure no Operator behaves maliciously?’ _Having_ an Operator doesn’t also ensure that the Netnavi’s behavior will be good. Humans aren’t always the most upstanding examples of morality.”

Hikari bowed his head for a moment in thought, knowing the truth of that, “There are already plenty of cases where humans have misused their NetNavis to wicked ends, as anybody can with a tool.”

He sighed. It was a dilemma he had lamented many times.

“NetNavis obey the orders given to them by humans, regardless of their morality. It's going to be a _nightmare_ for lawsuits in the future for one thing, I imagine.” Which putting the problems the entire cumbrous situation was bound to result in quite lightly, but how else could he put it?

Cossack said, “Yes! You see? But… A traditional AI, if we created a sufficiently advanced one with today’s level of technology, would be capable of understanding morality as a _person_ would, not as a tool would. It could develop a value system as a failsafe against unethical usage. _Therefore_ , I designed Forte’s AI, unlike the previous generations of NetNavis we at Scilabs have managed to produce, so he is _truly_ capable of mimicking the human learning process to its fullness.”

Somebody remarked from the left.

“You speak as though you think this is the first step to sparking a new wave of similarly self-aware NetNavis being commonplace online," A beat passed.

"Ah. Hoping for that to happen, are you?”

Cossack chuckled, accepting the question for what it was. He didn't mind it. It was warranted in this case: he wasn't hoping for imitations of his work (currently it was a cold, hard _fact_ that nobody could even begin to match Forte) to be fully reproduced, but he was willing to place some money on others following in his wake if he just showed them that it could _work_ , not simply in theory but in practice too. “I do hope for that, I can't deny that. In fact, I’d rather the results speak for themselves, than let _me_ do all the talking. Forte.exe,” He swept an arm out with a flourish. “Command routine set, _activate_!”

He’d never fully understood the advantages of making increasingly everything work through yelling—urm, through inputting verbal commands but Cossack couldn’t deny the usefulness of it as a common feature in the systems when it came to putting on a bit of a show.

(It eliminated the need to practice hitting the right buttons without looking downward, for one thing.)

The high-lighted sections and the windows blipped out instantly, leaving the NetNavi’s silhouette alone on the screen. Eyes closed and boyish face slackened as if in unconsciousness. Then, the screen abruptly zoomed in, leaving only the shoulders and head visible, and Forte snapped back online immediately.

 

Blink.

He took in the view from the monitor; the table ringed with numerous men (who he didn’t recognize) that were all looking at him, the gleaming panels of glass to the right (the outside view seen though it which he also didn't recognize), the sideways perspective of Dr. Cossack (whom he did recognize), twisted to face him while keeping the rest of the scientists and the board of directors in sight. His creator had a reassuring look on his face. He was expecting him to say... something, wasn't he?

Forte straightened himself, the slope of his shoulders rolled back, chin tilted up slightly and head held high.

Briskness seemed to be the best approach initially. Dr. Cossack had coached him a little on what to say beforehand. Be polite, make a _good_ first impression. You'll probably be working with some of their NetNavis later on after all. He could do this. It wasn't like it was that hard to do.

 _Be polite_.

“Good afternoon,” Forte said to the unfamiliar men, who watched him wordlessly. No reply. That was not what he had expected. Didn't the rules of human etiquette say you were supposed to respond immediately when somebody greeted you? Forte decided this disgruntled him. His mouth tightened.

Dr. Cossack took over and greeted him, “Good afternoon to you too. Everything running as it should be, Forte?”

“Yeah,” The NetNavi turned his gaze to his creator cheerfully, disconcerted red eyes warming back up again.

“Yes, it is.”

Dr. Cossack brightened. "Just as I expected."

They conversed for a few moments. Forte relaxed slightly.

Meanwhile the researchers regarded the NetNavi as if he was some new and mildly poisonous specimen of snake. Something _shiny_ , certainly, but not something you would want to get within biting range of if it didn't have a muzzle clamped around its mouth. His aloof demeanor indicated he had sized them up with that single greeting, that one quick glance before turning his attention back to his programmer, and they all were, in some way, a necessary but dull chore to be dealt with. What they saw as the slight attempt at faking a smile he had plastered on his face and the cheeriness Forte greeted Cossack with didn’t do much to soften his attitude despite the intent behind it.

(Only Dr. Hikari did not share the majority of the table's attitude. He knotted his hands more tightly together, resting his chin on the knuckles and observed intently.) 

One of them piped up dryly.

“Remind me again, doctor, what exactly is this auto-Navi supposed to _do_?”

"... 'Do?' What is he supposed to do? Like I said, he's the first successful independent Navi. For starters, he's doing very well gathering data and existing as himself just as it is. I've already outlined what sort of tasks he can personally assign us with in the labs."

"Yes, yes, but have you already hardwired his purpose into him?"

“I—”

“I’m _right here_ , you know,” Forte broke in sharply before Dr. Cossack could finish speaking, irate they were talking right over him as if he wasn’t. The nerve of this human who saw fit to critique his creator and had the gall to _ignore_ him. The nerve! Forte swallowed that lump of disgruntlement at being brushed off back down his throat the best that he could, and strove to keep his speech patterns clear. “My purpose—? You mean my duties? My current duties are network defense and maintenance of network energy. Oh, and troubleshooting the existing security systems of Scilabs. Improving them, if possible. I'll also be assisting Dr. Cossack with some of his research. Is that all?”

Silence.

It was not a pleasant silence.

Forte wondered if that hadn't been polite of him. 

The scientist coughed into his hand. "Awfully... talkative for a NetNavi, isn't he? So, it looks like you did. That's great. Therefore, sir, you claimed the auto-Navi's power levels—"

The black NetNavi glowered down at him from the screen, baffled by his continued refusal to direct his words at _him_ instead of his creator. _He'd_ been the one addressing them, not Dr. Cossack.

Dr. Cossack hastily interrupted the younger scientist before he got any further. “The auto-Navi’s designation is Forte. I suggest you use that, please.”

The scientist faltered. “... —Ur. I mean, Forte's energy levels, you said… Well, if his energy levels are for the purposes of network defense, trouble-shooting, ferreting out weaknesses in the system, and so forth, I'm certain you, sir, wouldn't mind providing us with some more solid proof that he can do all that? An example." 

 _'You can talk the talk, but can you walk the talk?_ ' in other words.

Sometimes, Cossack really had to resist the urge to turn his eyes skyward for a moment. He didn't, that would have been rude to do so in the middle of the meeting and it wasn't like the younger man meant any true _harm_ with his challenge, but it was a near thing.

“I have full confidence in Forte,” Dr. Cossack said.

He turned to regard his creation, who had metaphorically glowed briefly with pride behind his back at the vocalization of Dr. Cossack's stout belief in him, elbow resting on the podium. “... Well, Forte. Would you object to giving my colleagues a demonstration of your battle capabilities as the highest caliber of defense programs?”

Forte lifted both of his eyebrows with a self-satisfied air, though the gesture was utterly lost under the shadow of his helmet to the humans.

“I have no problem with that, doctor,” he agreed, meeting his gaze evenly.

Dr. Cossack's beard twitched with the movement of his lips, "Excellent."

Soft mutters swept the table, some with an incredulous tone, others intrigued despite themselves as they raised their eyebrows at their neighbors and conferred among themselves. Soon enough, after a short squabble between two of the staff that had been settled through a speedy, professional match of rock-paper-scissors that definitely didn’t involve any discrete stomping on feet under the table, three security programs were logged into the monitor in an influx of data. Virtual meters from Forte, who stood still, their images appeared in the cyberspace depicted on the screen.

“Will these,” Forte pointed at the security programs, the bulk of their smooth white armour and single glowing optics to serve as their eyes. So obviously artificial. So obviously inferior to himself. He thought, _they could do better than this. I will_ make _them to do better than this_. “Be my opponents?”

“Yes,” Dr. Cossack said, like they were sharing a private joke.

“They’re cutting-edge technology,” warned one of the staff, discreetly nursing a sore set of toes. “State of the art, I mean! Highest caliber of defense program or no, he ain’t getting away without damage from _these_ programs.”

“Am I permitted to attack immediately?” Forte tested the waters, innocently and blithely ignoring the speaker as one would ignore a wafting breeze and then he paused. “Please?”

Dr. Cossack replied, “Yes.”

Forte’s eyes gleamed balefully and he smirked at the security. He lifted up a hand, gesturing for them to make the first blow. A blalent taunt. _A boast._

 _Come get me. If you **dare**_.

They dared indeed, though it was less because of daring and more because the input of attack orders from their operators compelled them forward to what had been identified as a hostile target.

And Forte was happy to show them a ‘hostile target.’

Very, very happy.

 

He sidestepped the first security program’s lunge, then back-flipped neatly over the second one’s swipe with a cyber-sword. The third one’s attack, he ducked under. The force in the displaced air over his head made him grin savagely before he skipped backward as it struck at him again and again.

He caught the program’s arm mid-blow.

If the security program had been capable of it, it would have widened its single optic in terror as its fist trembled uselessly in Forte’s grip. A web of fine cracks started to race up its armour, the metal shuddering under the pressure.

“You’re not strong enough to damage me with a flimsy attack like that,” he chided, uncaring that the program was not clever enough for banter. He completed a swift turn on his heel for momentum, wrenching his enemy along with it into thrown flight.

The security program smashed headfirst into the wall, buried up to its neck. Pixels gushed upward from where its face had embedded itself into the wall. It convulsed, sparks flying off it erratically before twitching and falling limp with a definite finality.

It broke apart on the spot, deleted.

Forte circled left, light on his feet, power coursing through him, bubbling up from inside him, _reveling_ in it. All that energy. It was boundless. He didn't even need his buster. He could destroy these sad excuses for security programs with just his pinkie finger, they were so... _weak_. Weak and puny and slow. Forte could take them apart with his bare hands. He didn't understand how the humans didn't see all the faults in them, all of their design flaws. Were all the others like this? He would have to purge them from the systems first chance he got if that was the case. That way, Forte reasoned, they would have to be replaced by more effective models. Stronger models. Models that could actually do their job.

The second program lunged, cyber-sword hissing through the air.

Forte ripped its head off.

Its headless form lurched about in confusion, sword still raised, blind, but still functioning before he put his fist through its chest.

It followed in its fellow's fate.

Undeterred by the violence of its two fellows’ deletion, the remaining security program advanced on Forte with every intention of mechanically beating him down. The whining of energy collecting in the barrel of the massive, glowing cannon in place of its arm testified to its determination this be so. Instead, it suddenly found itself bereft of both of its limbs and knocked a good two meters back before Forte proceeded to violently smack it around with its own severed limbs.

Throughout the entire demonstration, as Forte had effortlessly controlled the flow of battle, the scientists and the department heads had sat back in the conference room, with the occasional shuffling, and watched.

“Enough,” said Dr. Cossack, calmly, like Forte hadn't just treated the most powerful security programs Scilabs had to offer, as if they were harmless ragdolls to be yanked around for his personal amusement. Forte paused in his assault against the now-disabled program, glancing sideways at Cossack coolly. Bright red eyes blinked, surprised.

“Take it easy, Forte,” He patiently repeated his request. “Stand down. They're not viruses, take it easy.”

“But…! It's still functioning!” Forte protested, grip tightening on a severed arm, data unraveling from its torn end. His creator hadn't stopped him from slaughtering viruses in the supercomputer before and he saw little difference then and now, in the midst of demonstrating his power. He was too young still, a mere week in age. 

" _They're_ not _virsues_ , you don't need to delete them. They pose no threat by themselves. Now, let that security program go, Forte."

"Dr. Cossack," Forte was petulant. “If they lost so easily to me, aren't they defects? What possible use is there for defects? You don't need to keep them around. I should get rid of them. Let me finish this one off.”

The man shook his head, light playing off the lens of his glasses.

"No, I will not," the refusal to bend to Forte's desire to eliminate his beaten opponent was gentle but unerringly firm in its delivery. Dr. Cossack reached out and unplugged the connection cord from his PET he’d plugged into the monitor with a sharp yank.

"Thank you for the demonstration. I'm sure my colleagues appreciated it. Now,  _Jack out_ , Forte.exe."

 

_Click._

 

The image of Forte on the massive wall monitor blinked and disappeared in a shower of data particles before re-appearing on the PET’s smaller screen. He crossed his arms over his chest and now securely out of sight of the rest of the scientists, did a remarkably accurate impression of a sullen child trying hard to be mature about the entire situation.

And failing.

He opened his mouth to complain once Dr. Cossack had swept his papers off the podium and reclaimed his normal seat at the table, but Dr. Cossack shushed the NetNavi before he managed to get anything out as the next scientist scheduled to give a presentation stood up from his chair with a clatter.

“We’ll discuss this later, Forte,” Dr. Cossack muttered to the PET’s screen, while the scientist sweated and fumbled to hand out papers and get his act together in less than a minute. “Not right now. Later, okay? I’ll give you my full attention then. I promise.”

Forte’s eyebrows met in a taut line, but after a few seconds he snapped his mouth shut, huffed, and looked away.

If Dr. Cossack promised, he would do it. He supposed there was no harm done in waiting. 

 

The doctor took the silence from the NetNavi as agreement, nodded warmly at him, and returned his attention to the researcher now standing behind the podium, who was loudly clearing his throat and adjusting his tie with a fever, like he was somewhat concerned if he didn't keep a stranglehold on it at all time, it would manage to do something drastic like sprout fangs, leap up and choke him.

“Gentlemen! Today, I present you several of the adjustments I can believe can be made to the Environmental Control System…—”

.

* * *

 

.

**4.**

After the meeting concluded, Hikari stayed behind and helped his old friend gather up the leftover pamphlets he’d used during his presentation. The other researchers had already collected their belongings and papers and left the meeting room empty save for the two men.

The glare of the afternoon sun streamed through the glass wall, the specks of dust motes drifting in lazy swirls in the air without any hurry. Outside was humid, thick with the heat of spring. Inside, air conditioning worked diligently to combat the elements.

 

“Truth be told, he behaved better than I expected. Forte, I mean,” Cossack mused, stacking the pamphlets they'd gathered on top of each other one after another in order of 'looks like multiple people stepped and/or tap-danced on it' to 'slightly rumpled.' "He's a strong-headed one, that boy. I'd worried he wouldn't know how to interact with new people. It's good to see that my fears were groundless ones, haha!"

“What?” Hikari was slightly taken aback. Mikhail talked like... Oh. "The incident during the meeting hadn’t been Forte’s first activation?"

Cossack stopped and looked at him.

“I would never have activated Forte during a conference meeting, of all places,” Cossack scoffed good-naturedly. No, it hadn’t and had Hikari been born yesterday? No, of course not. That would be a bewildering and distressing environment for Forte to, for all intents and purposes, born into.“I activated Forte alone, in a calm, controlled setting and conducted multiple personal interviews with him afterwards.”

"Ah, I see. Taking some extra precautions besides the usual ones?"

Hikari heartily approved.

"... I thought it was better safe than sorry, in this case," Cossack admitted. His foot tapped a beat on the ground for a few seconds. “Although, I was admittedly anxious to see the results firsthand. All of the prototypes I programmed as platforms for test-runs were genetic models I didn't bother to customize outside of the specific coding I was testing. None of them possessed an iota of self-awareness. They hardly made for simulating conversation. Forte has a _personality_. He's cognizant of himself, I'm certain of it.”

The note of fondness in his voice was understated, but real.

The man said, "And he has the capacity to develop a set of morals, judging from what you've already said during the meeting. Mikhail, did you—"

Cossack studied him for a few moments. Then he said:

"Morals... rules—values," Cossack glanced up at the monitor, now a featureless square of black affixed to the wall since it wasn't in use. Nothing showed on its dull screen. "He'll learn them from what he sees others doing. It's heuristics, Tadashi. Forte will learn as he goes, like any human would. I want to see how he develops. I want to give him a chance to develop."

Hikari mulled that over.

The younger scientist coughed. "I imagine he'll make his fair share of mistakes in the process however."

“Yes, yes… That’s true,” Dr. Hikari tugged at the bushy mass of white that enveloped his chin and a good portion of his face. The more complicated the task, the more advanced a NetNavi’s level of intelligence must be to handle it. An independent NetNavi would need even further advancements than what they already had and that was why he'd been one of whose who'd offered recommendations of Mikhail for the head of the Auto-Navi project, all those long, long months ago. Mikhail had a bright mind and displayed a willingness to look outside the box. Smart, stubborn, even unorthodox in his programming techniques. Hikari had believed he would be indispensable to the project's success.

He'd been proven right.

He chuckled. "Intelligent decision-making takes practice. Even we humans, old and young, aren't very good at it.”

"Some people think AIs have a leg up on us when it comes to that," Cossack said, bemused. He picked up the stack of pamphlets with a soft crinkle of the paper, one-handedly waving it in the air before setting it back down. "They put too much stock in cold logic, really. Like numbers. Numbers aren't _infallible_. Peh. You give an AI only numbers to work with, its decisions certainly aren't going to be fool-proof." 

Hikari's elderly eyes squinted in thoughtfulness. 

“AIs are the creations of humans. We can only attempt to replicate what we understand of the human mind, in computer code,” Hikari said idly. The main differences, to him, between an sufficiently advanced AI's brain and a human's brain; it came down to the materials, fleshy tissues or inorganic matter, possible processing speed, and the available storage space.

“And even our understanding of what defines a ‘mental state’ is incomplete. There’s obviously so much more to it than _simply_ input, function, output but...  _what_? We haven't isolated that factor. If I could just...” He muttered, drumming a finger on the table. 

One might roll their eyes at the human race's urge to make all things in the universe explicable, but that was humans for you. Labels helped. They loved their labels; they gravitated towards them. Cossack, having been on the receiving end of plenty such rambles from his friend before, considered this and hummed and nodded his head along understandingly out of habit as Hikari went on, thinking aloud and mumbling in parts.

Then another thought occurred to Hikari. He broke off his rambling.

"If today wasn't Forte's first activation, when _did_ you get him up and running anyway?"

"He's been online for about a week now," was Cossack's casual reply. 

That explained Forte's small display of familiarity with the younger scientist during the meeting earlier. It wasn't pre-programmed. It came of personal experience acquired beforehand, and a positive experience at that, from the sound of it. That led to another conclusion. Hikari asked, "Let me guess, is _that_ why you've spent so much time this week working overtime? Recently it's has been oddly difficult to see you outside of your lab, enjoying the sunlight."

"Like you're one to talk about spending too much time on the job," Cossack sniffed in what he imagined to be a suitably gruff and masculine manner, and declined to comment further.

Hikari clapped him on the back, smirking a little. "So, tell me about your NetNavi. Though go a little more in-depth than what you gave our colleagues, if you would please?"

"He's—" He began, paused, then rubbed the back of his neck.

"Actually, why don't I just introduce you two? It'll save time. The meeting alone didn't provide much substance in way of a first impression, I'm afraid."

Hikari agreed, "Of course, alright."

Cossack strolled over to the other end of the meeting room where he’d left the PET recharging with Forte safe inside it. It was a bulky piece of equipment in his hands as he scooped it up and unplugged it, with a fold-out keyboard and a small screen. (Hikari was always looking into ways to improve and streamline its design, when he wasn't locking himself into the rooms where Alpha's servers were housed.)

The PET turned on with a quiet ' _blip_ ,' screen glowing to life and Cossack held it up in a steady hand, careful to keep the device angled so Forte would have a clear view.

He gestured at his older colleague, fingers curled out and hand open. 

“Forte, this is Doctor Hikari, one of the heads of Scilabs,” He pointed at the screen, where Forte’s visage blinked up at him. “Tadashi, as you already know, this is Forte, Forte.exe.”

“Hello, Forte,” said Hikari, and smiled agreeably at him. The Netnavi does not smile back, just tilting his head to the side, his calm eyes watching, his boyish face serious, his brow creased in concentration. He was evaluating him, the portly scientist realized.

Evaluating him for _what_ , Hikari wasn't certain.

“Dr. Hikari,” he said, not rudely, but his curious tone compensated for his lack of finesse. He nodded, once. That was all the acknowledgement Forte gave. “Dr. Cossack talks about you sometimes. He thinks very highly of you, I believe. I’m pleased to meet you, sir.”

"Really? Is that so? I'm glad he has expressed a good opinion of me to you," Dr. Hikari's forehead wrinkled, though he kept smiling.

Dr. Cossack looked amused.

Forte blinked.

Dr. Hikari asked, "Have you enjoyed your time at our research institution so far...—?"

 

When Hikari closed the meeting room behind him, he then set off at a brisk pace down the hallway. After checking his wristwatch and belatedly realizing if he didn't hurry off to his own duties right that instance he wouldn't have time to get the amount of work that needed to get finished _today_ done before he was expected back home for supper, which had resulted in his departure, the old scientist was left to wonder.

He'd bid a hurried farewell to Mikhail and his creation before leaving, of course.

But Dr. Hikari doubted little that he would hearing about that auto-Navi—Forte—again soon enough.

The NetNavi hadn't, for all of the aloof demeanor he'd presented to him, seemed like the sort to keep himself quiet for too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do scientists talk so much? We just don't know. 
> 
> Allow me to add a disclaimer: I have little-to-no clue of how meetings are conducted in the actual scientific community. I would hope most of them are a little more professional than this, but I suppose they're human too.
> 
> The mention of Forte being responsible for the "maintenance of network energy" is a minor reference to the other Rockman manga, Battle Story Rockman.exe, that never got fully translated from what I hear.
> 
> (All those asshole scientists going "uh, Cossack, is it REALLY a good idea to program your auto-Navi to look like a little kid in a bodysuit uhm why did you even DO that anyway" is definitively me poking fun at how only kids and preteens seem to be consistently capable of getting things done or dealing with global threats in the EXEverse. The adults are useless! Oh, Megaman canons. You and your ridiculous world building.)
> 
> Also, thank you to the two guests who left kudos. I appreciated them! And thank you to those who read my work too, unbetaed as it is.


	3. for the love I bear you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forte wasn't blind. He saw the humans' reactions to his power, and their reactions... unsettled him occasionally.

**5.**

Scilabs was still getting used to Forte. It was a slow, meandering process.

Which kept hitting snags.

The general consensus was that Forte, if nothing else, seemed to live up to expectations as Dr. Cossack had promised at the conference meeting weeks and weeks ago. Revolutionary program or not, he had work to do. Troubleshooting, security-testing, network energy maintenance—Forte did all of what was given to him as his duties and did it well. He didn't slack off. He didn't tolerate ill standards if he thought they could be improved upon. Nothing seemed to be a struggle for him if it took his fists to resolve it.

The issues laid with a problem that had started early on.

Forte didn't listen to orders well.

His natural disposition inclined him against it. He talked back and he did it _constantly_. He was polite and clear-spoken in temperament, but he would not curb his tongue for anyone, not even his creator. Forte wielded bluntness in word and action like a unsheathed knife in his hand. If he saw what he deemed an error or a bug or something that was plainly not up to date, he did his best to destroy it. Consequences could be dealt with later.

The first testing session had went smoothly, as did many others. It was after the sixth or the seventh where things went off-script and stayed there.

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

"—Shut up! A mere NetNavi has the nerve to lecture me?"

The door clicked shut behind Dr. Cossack, shutting inside the wisp of fresh air that had passed over the line of the threshold when he walked inside. The argument that had been ongoing before his arrival broke off mid-stride and two faces turned towards him as he approached—one was the NetNavi occupying the monitor's screen, the other was a balding scientist. Dr. Cossack took in the scene, wiping sweat off his face that had been generated from his rapid half-sprint all the way from his laboratories to this room. This quiet, quiet room. It would have hardly seemed grounds for him to be abruptly called away from his work, since none of the expansive machinery inside appeared to be malfunctioning and nothing was on fire, except for the fact that Forte was involved. 

" _There_ you are, sir," the researcher bit out curtly. "Things got out of hand with the NetNavi you created, Cossack."

"What has happened? Is Forte alright?" Dr. Cossack asked.

"The NetNavi—oh, he's fine. Not so can be said for my security, unfortunately," said the researcher, his tone implying he would much rather have it reversed to be the other way around. Dr. Cossack's gaze sought out Forte after a moment. Forte, and what looked to be the aftermath of a particularly nasty (or hopelessly one-sided) battle carved into the cyberspace behind him.

"The security was lousy," Forte defended himself, undaunted. He was not cowed by the balding researcher. Too much enthusiastic will; so little seemed to cow him. 

He added, "So I fixed it. It was no loss."

Hidden behind Forte’s composure was a trace of apprehension, an unspoken question he does not air.  

Again Forte had gone looking for flaws in the systems to expose, holes in security that no one knew were there. The researchers hadn’t taken graciously to it in the slightest. Forte didn’t understand why they kept getting upset—he’d waited until testing had began, hadn’t he? Like always. He hadn’t intended to disrupt the situation, yet apparently he had, and Dr. Cossack might be disappointed as a result. That wasn't what he had meant to happen.

"You deleted all of the security programs—?" _Again?_ Dr. Cossack stopped himself when he noticed the other researcher’s irk. And the absence of his own NetNavi. _That’s the fifteenth—no, the sixteenth NetNavi he’s deleted this week_.

"Fixed it?" The researcher's lip curled in displeasure. "Why, you little... You think you can just stroll into here and turn up your nose at me, kid? You were only brought in for troubleshooting. That was all. Not this! My security measures were _fine_. Until you took it into your head to sabotage them."

Dr. Cossack's eyebrows dipped and his mouth tightened unhappily at the manner in which the other man addressed Forte.

The black NetNavi drew himself up.

"'Security measures?' Is that you called firewalls that were in no way sufficient protection for this network? They’re inferior, they had enough holes a couple of _mettaurs_  could have gotten through them in a day," Forte's voice rose indignantly with great conviction. He glared. That wasn't beginning to touch on how weak the security program had been. The other programs simply weren't functioning on his level and it irritated Forte immensely that the humans had blamed _him_ for what was a flaw on _their_ parts. "I only exercised concern suitable to what the situation called for! If anything, you should be thanking me, shouldn't you? Imagine if somebody actually hostile had gotten into your files in my place."

"You," snapped the researcher. It was clear he was fuming, a vein pulsing on his temples, the thinning tufts of hair left on his head bristling. His fleshy fists clenched. " _Trashed_ my firewalls, _deleted_ all the anti-virus programs I spent an entire day installing, then proceeded to attack my NetNavi, and then you—now you expect _thanks_?"

Forte glared at him.

"What? ... Are you even listening to what I'm saying? That's not it. I already told you why—" Forte didn’t back down. Hadn't he just explained his reasoning? It wasn't about being thanked. He didn't care if he got thanked for doing his job.

Dr. Cossack hastily interjected himself into the conversation.

"Now, doctor, I'm sure Forte meant no harm. He’d proven himself to be diligent and an asset to the labs before. Come now, there’s no need to shout. I’m sorry about the unintentional damage. He is—"

"He's no asset, that’s for sure!" the man rounded on Dr. Cossack with barely suppressed annoyance. The cords of his neck burned red above the collar. "He's a _nuisance_ , that's what he is."

"Hey, I heard that, you know—!"

Forte flared up again, fighting to make himself heard but the researcher ignored him.

The researcher continued, "Do you think your apologies will make up for him ruining my firewalls? Wasting all the time I used on programming them?"

"No, no. Of course not. I will repair any and all damage sustained. Forte is my responsibility as my charge and I will take responsibility for the setback he’s caused you," Dr. Cossack volunteered, his tone measured and steely. The other man stopped in his tracks. "It shouldn't take very long for me to recover what I can and reprogram it back into a presentable state. If you’re alright with that.”

Silence.

The blood that had steadily risen in the researcher's cheeks faded in hue after a few seconds. His hands relaxed, as did the tone of his words. After a pause, he stepped back and accepted the olive branch that'd been offered for what it was. He didn't even look at Forte, disregarding his presence entirely.

"Alright. But for your own benefit, sir, I would suggest you don't let this happen again."

He stalked away, faint splotches of red riding high and hot in his face. The door rattled in its hinges when he slammed it shut behind him. Doubtlessly off to fetch some hardware disks for coding temporary placeholders for his security until Cossack owned up to his offer, and to find others to complain to about the inconvenience at length later.

Dr. Cossack stood alone in the room. Forte cut a slight and unimposing figure on the monitor as he shifted his weight, folded his arms and stared off to the side, refusing to look his creator directly in the eye.

He didn't think he was in the wrong.

But if Dr. Cossack was disappointed in him, and had only waited until they had privacy to express that disappointment to him, Forte found himself extremely reluctant to confront him.

 

"Forte," Dr. Cossack sighed. "Сын. There is a reason there's established protocol for this."

"You made me to help people," Forte reminded him. "I was trying to help."

"I know," Dr. Cossack reassured him, groping for words to explain. "But—first of all, Forte. Forte, look at me please.” Following a delay, Forte shuffled his feet and complied, his gaze sliding reluctantly back to the doctor.

“There we go. Now, that man worked very hard—" he politely disregarded the huffy snort that remark got from Forte, and an irked mutter under his breath that sounded an awful lot like _yeah he certainly did_ — "—On this security set-up. By destroying his firewalls and NetNavi, you underdetermined all the effort he put into it. It must be very upsetting to him to lose three months of dutiful programming. That's a lot of coding to a human, Forte. This was the results of his work."

"And his work proved its inadequacy. He needs to work harder. Wouldn't this provide suitable motivation to do that?" Forte said pleasantly.

Dr. Cossack was proud of and loved his offspring in equal measure, but he cannot help admitting sometimes Forte seemed bent on making things difficult for both himself and other people, deliberately or not. He dearly wished he had some sort of guidebook for this. Did Tadashi have such troubles with that son of his, when he was young? Had he known what to say then? Cossack didn't know.

"That's not quite how he'll look at it, I fear," Cossack stopped himself.

"What do you mean?" Forte asked.

“He’ll likely see this as more of a slight than... motivation to improve,” he admitted.

Forte’s brow knit in confusion, “Why?”

“Your behavior, my boy. He doesn’t think it was warranted,” Dr. Cossack said gently.

“But _why_?” Forte demanded. He actually sounded a little hurt. “If I left it alone, and done just what what was asked of me, sooner or later somebody else would have come and done the same, but worse. If I get rid of it now, he’ll _have_ no choice but to program better defenses for later, and isn’t that a good thing?”

Cossack looked at the tight line of Forte's clenched jaw, mouth pulled down in a snarl and saw that Forte had bothered to extend what his child obviously considered a charitable (if somewhat overzealous from an outside point of view) gesture to somebody else and been met with lack of understanding, rejection.

So Forte felt hurt in his pride and insulted.

"I’m sure your actions will prove beneficial to the future Net, Forte. I’m not angry with what you did or disappointed with why you did it. But... please try think more deeply before you act in the future. Okay?" not knowing what else to do, Dr. Cossack settled on a compromise between positive reinforcement that trying to help was good, and a plea that Forte consider the consequences beyond the immediate pay-off, beyond the consequences Forte wanted to exist.

The NetNavi searched his face for a moment.

“Yes, Dr. Cossack,” Forte hung his head. There was an instance of static-filled digital feedback, the image on the monitor blurred, and then came the ' _click_ ' of Forte logging out of the computer.

Cossack rested a hand against his forehead and breathed out slowly.

Maybe he would try to bring this up again during Forte's own personal maintenance check.

Perhaps not.

 

**.**

* * *

**.**

 

**6.**

Forte could not _actually_ tap the inside of the glass screen but had he possessed the means, he would have tried in hopes that it would rouse his creator.

"... Dr. Cossack?" he tried again, his tone of voice quiet.

Older now, some of the hesitation had left his words in return for a certain kind of surety. In himself. It was easier to feel sure of one's self when one did not feel the need to constantly run cross-checks of one's actions against a pre-loaded databank anymore.

He processed information very fast. A slew of new things, new data to update those databanks with, new _challenges_. The world was no longer one big, bright blank that Forte had been set against. He had context. He watched and he learned and he fought when he thought he could, each experience a steadier foothold into the foundation of what Forte had established as himself.  

More loudly, he repeated himself.

"Dr. Cossack, that doesn't look comfortable. Wake _up_."

Dr. Cossack's shoulders rose and fell slowly with the motion of breathing in and out, shoulder blades slouching together, one arm pillowed beneath him, cheek pressed against the worktable's smooth surface. His glasses clung grimly to the bridge of the doctor's nose, refusing to be knocked more than slightly askew on his face.

Something about him felt whittled down.

New lines had engraved themselves faintly onto his face.

There wasn't even a twitch of movement behind his eyelids at the sound of Forte speaking.

It was a small mercy that he wasn't drooling onto the space bar, Forte supposed. He'd once overheard one of the humans—one of the interns—describing with a lot of pointless detail to another researcher what activities a friend's offspring and their aged grandfather shared in common which apparently included drooling all over things. In their sleep. And needing to disgorge their bodily wastes at unfortunate times. The grandfather also apparently lived solely to spite his remaining family. Honestly, it had sounded more than _complaints_ over minor inconveniences than anything to him. Gossip. Boring gossip, too. They weren't even gossiping about something that was amusing in its own convoluted way, like human ideas of 'fashion' or 'politics.' Back then, Forte had rolled his eyes and made a concentrated effort to move onto more productive things.

(Later, Dr. Cossack had told him eavesdropping was a disgraceful habit quite firmly when he'd found out, but he'd also added laughingly ' _so long as you don't get caught_ ' after the reprimand so Forte had mistakenly taken it to mean that it cancelled out the scolding and he had an all-clear to continue.)

The black NetNavi on the screen in front of Cossack, had pressed two fingers into his temple, rubbing them idly in circles in some small, insignificant betrayal of the disquiet that lit in his eyes. A gesture born from subroutines designed to pick up upon and emulate the body language of humans. Trying to think.

He paused.

Outside, the line of the horizon had weighed itself down with clouds, dark as a set of bruises and swollen with moisture. The heavy swells of clouds had split wide open sometime in the early afternoon and sent their contents spitting downward.

The day had bore on. The rain had not stopped. It came whipping down in wet, misty curtains, accompanied by bursts of wind. It pattered against windows, drumming against the slabs of pavement, and pinging down onto rooftops to drain down into sewage pipes.

Outside, cars beeped across the darkened roads at each others, the headlights of still more cars and buses and taxis blurring past, and feet splashed through dirty puddles. A thousand pairs of feet going _thump thump thump. Splish splash splash_. Through the din, voices rose as they talked into their cellphones, reassuring either bosses or close friends they were on their way, no need to worry, they'll be there quick as can be. People huddled under umbrellas and bus-stops. The screens of their handhelds glowed bright with text messages.

_What do you want for dinner tonight? :o_

_hey sweetheart how was your day_

_So damn tired man, I ain't ready to work this many weekend shifts for so many hours. I'm ready to drop dead on my feet._

_Mom brought the cat back from the vet tonight and she's alright! : > Drop by tomorrow if you can and say hello if you can, okay?_

_I miss you. Will you be home soon?_

The bare exoskeletons of skyscrapers-still-under-construction and high-rise apartments loomed through the mist. Steel beams, cords, and rickety, wooden platforms clung to their gleaming sides like tiny outcroppings of fungus on the bark of a vast tree.

Inside the laboratories, the supercomputer's monitor hummed and buzzed, still running, its fans whirring away, and Forte sighed worriedly, exasperated. His arm dropped down to his side again, hands finding each other and interlocking loosely behind his back. He rocked back on his heels and judged Dr. Cossack was going to wake up with more than a few kinks in his neck and back, judging from the awkward position he'd fallen asleep in.

 

It was the norm that the NetNavi stayed inside the cyberspace of the one of the computers that Dr. Cossack had re-commissioned for him, when he had nothing to do, not the supercomputer he had been initially activated inside. That was for work, research, though Forte was not barred from entering it—Forte didn't mind the transfer. Dr. Cossack had asked for his feedback first before doing it, after all. He'd rather minimize inefficient clutter than unintentionally cause more of it for his creator.

Besides, Forte found that he liked having his own 'space' for the first time, in some sense of the word, so long as that space was connected to somebody who provided interesting conversation, like Dr. Cossack. The second computer was still wired onto the supercomputer's servers, same as the other computers crowding the room, linked together in a joint network that he had free range thereof.

A sanctuary, in a way.

Occasionally Dr. Cossack would put Forte inside the little, portable terminal—the PET—for ease of transportation, but that happening had not been overly common even in the beginning and its occurrence had eventually decreased to a rarity after Dr. Cossack had granted him full access to the mainframe of the laboratories' experimental internet (the _Alpha system_ , the old and overweight scientist, Hikari, had called it. He'd said he'd been working on it years before even a spark of the idea of an auto-Navi like Forte had been proposed. It was to be the basis for the modern Net community) from the second computer's network too.

From there, it had been child's play to learn how to transfer himself from one computer system to another without external aide, jumping from link to link, zipping through connection cables and internal wiring.

An ability which had come in handy when the noise of Dr. Cossack working in the adjoining room abruptly creased earlier. Caught up in an embarrassingly childish burst of alarm, Forte had rushed over to the supercomputer, invading the screen, waving and pushing aside the streams of numbers, the tedious algorithms and figures the doctor had been working with, to bark out a sharp inquiry.

 

_what happened are you alright doctor... ?_

 

It'd been a relief to discover Dr. Cossack slumped over in his swivel chair, having merely fallen asleep at the computer he'd been typing away at. And now here Forte was.

In hindsight, he should have seen it coming; this wasn't unprecedented. When he'd been first activated, his creator had often delayed his routine journeys back to his house in the city to stay at Scilabs and talk to him, foregoing an hour or two of the full eight hours of unconsciousness in a soft bed that humans required to function in order to keep his child company.

(Forte had not thought to put himself into sleep mode, those first days he'd been online. Hadn't needed to. He still didn't _have_ to, not on a nightly basis like the humans did. But the hallways of Scilab were dank and echoing without the bustle of people going about their business inside them. The night was long with nothing to do. Nobody to talk to, no humans to interact with. Hours and hours of silence.

Forte could manage the time he spent alone, but still, sometimes it was... trying.

The other NetNavis, what few remained active within Scilabs after the darkness had settled down on the land, did not help. They didn't care that the humans left at night. Actually, they cared about little that went on outside of their assigned functions.

... There was something flimsy about how they presented themselves and Forte didn't refer solely to their power levels when he thought that. They needed humans in a way he did not, needed them to make their decisions, and input orders, and generally do all the hard thinking for them.

Such small-mindedness, such subpar _limitations_.

And talking to them always became unpleasant, sooner or later. It would leave him out-of-sorts, frustrated long after the fact of the attempt at conversation concluding. _If there is nobody like me even among my own kind, how can I tell if I'm operating as I'm supposed to_ , Forte would mentally seethe, unable to work out his feelings.

If he had no equals, how could he test himself? Improve? How could he come to understand his own limits?

It was irrelevant either way. Flimsy or not, in the end none of the security programs nor the other scientists' NetNavis liked Forte in the slightest and that was fine by Forte. He had decided, without malice or true disdain, but very early on that they simply weren't worth his time.

So, Forte didn't talk to any of the other NetNavis unless he had to, and he tried to function in accordance to the human time schedule instead of wasting his time staying up. He delayed the process of sleep mode so it would be at nighttime and partook in it nightly even if he had no real need to. It seemed a correct course of action—the correct solution.)

Like with his rare times inside the PET, Dr. Cossack denying himself rest to work overtime no longer occurred all that frequently. But by no means had it stopped happening. By now, Forte felt he should be able to notice the signs. But that thought came mainly with the benefit of hindsight, and he was fairly certain there was a saying among the humans about things like that. Still, it had now left him with the dilemma of either persist with the so-far unsuccessful endeavor of trying to wake Dr. Cossack up, or allow him his rest.

 

It was probably for the best if he let him continue to sleep.

He was not so selfish as to demand Dr. Cossack devote all of his time to him. Dr. Cossack wouldn't act against Forte's best interests. So in return Forte wouldn't act against his, not even in so small a fashion as denying him his slumber even if he was so very bored. Testing sessions had been cancelled today and Forte had nothing to do, but idle and let the minutes slide by.

He disliked idling.

With a wide yawn muffled behind his hand, Forte turned on his heel and walked away into the depths of the computer's cyberspace.

He left Dr. Cossack to his dreams.

Forte sometimes had trouble understanding that humans would sleep for pleasure, for an escape, because their body have overridden their mind in its demands. It was a matter of control. Forte could always decide whether or not he felt like going into sleep mode. To him, sleep was for recharging, recuperating and nothing else, something one did when one were too exhausted to continue. Even when Forte's frame shut down, his systems still kept busy, running self-diagnostics and virus scans, compiling all the day's data, parsing out what was useless and what was not.

(And he _did_ dream, though not in the fashion humans did; it was really only his systems replaying files from his memory logs for re-processing. Forte knew that. He couldn't dream of things that had never happened like Dr. Cossack had described to him once when he'd asked. Forte's 'dreams,' as they were when he allowed them to happen at all, were not terribly exciting, a swirling stream of kaleidoscopic images recycled from whatever had occurred that given day. Conscious, he didn't suffer any misconception they were truly occurring in reality, and experienced them with the mild curiosity of an observer.

It was a basic feature that activated automatically anyway if the data collected that day was so momentous or contradictory that it require additional processing beyond the standard nightly procedures. Otherwise, Forte was free to disable the extra code that triggered said feature without adverse backlash whenever he chose.

He did not chose to do so.)

 

Walking calmed him to a degree Forte had discovered, even if he had no set destination in mind. He walked, a small, dark silhouette pacing across the reach of the network he was inside.

It was an outlet for his restlessness.

One could hear little clicking noises as programs ran on far above if they strained their ears.

And for a while, there was only the clicking, and the echo of his footsteps ringing across the floor, and the occasional _thud_ as he leapt lightly across the gaps between the looming cubic structures, to break the hollow droning of electricity crackling in the background.

 

When Forte came back, the mug of dark liquid had grown cold beside his creator's slumbering form—coffee, was the NetNavi's guess. Dr. Cossack liked it. He'd observed humans enjoyed heating up their beverages before putting little white packets inside it and ingesting them. This applied to hot drinks, but not to cold ones, Forte had also noted. No, for cold ones if they put anything in it, it was chunks of ice to keep it cool.

It was one of their many inexplicable and yet unchangeable laws of behavior, like using lots of complicated words to say one thing but mean another in truth, or dismissing him as if he were some broken kitchen appliance they were fed up with for not working as they wanted it to during the times when he attempt to purge errors from the system by exposing them to them.

Forte's eyes narrowed.

It was a stitch in his side he cannot ward off with either fists or buster, so he was spurred to resent it. _Dismissal_. Was it really so much to ask to be treated as a person, worthy of being heard and deserving of all the rights that any other individual had? Dr. Cossack didn't dismiss him like that, not once. Why did the others persist in it? He was not lesser than the humans. He may not be 'better' than them, but Forte could not conceive any world in which he was lesser to anything.

It was 'wrong' for them to act like he was and wrong that they treated him like… like… An object. Nothing that held any true weight. Something they could tweak and push around until it fit their whims.

Forte shook his head, firmly delegating those bitter thoughts to the back of his mind from which they had bubbled up, and cycled back to his original train of thought, which was that the mug of coffee resting on the table had gone cold, and that would make Dr. Cossack sad because he liked his coffee hot. Not that Forte could personally do anything about that. There was a computer screen behind him and it that he could not breach. He knew this too.

 _And_ he wasn’t Dr. Cossack’s errand boy either. That too. 

Dr. Cossack did not need his hand to be held. 

... Hm?

Forte craned his neck, shifting and squinting so he can get a view good enough to make out the side of the mug turned almost entirely away from him. It was almost cast in shadow. He squinted some more. The mug had **#кофеин** scribbled on it in bold letters. Despite himself, Forte smiled, tickled into amusement by something he couldn't decipher. His creator's easy sense of humor, perhaps.

Dr. Cossack had a warm and solid presence that was easy for Forte to take comfort in. It was an instinctive thing to put trust in Dr. Cossack to him, much like how he gave no implicit thought to trusting in his own strengths. It was an anchor of Forte’s world.

After a moment, Forte settled down and held still, listening to the bellows of the man who made him from lines of coding's lungs slowly blowing in and out, and contemplated the mechanics of a creature that was powered by a single organ—a bloody pump in its chest and a lump of meat inside its skull, of all things.

 _Humans_.

What an strange species. He was still waiting on that crash course in interpreting all of their oddities.

**.**

* * *

**.**

**7.**

“What is this machine’s purpose?”

Dr. Cossack, a bowl of lukewarm stew he’d heated with a microwave in one of the interns’ breakrooms steaming sullenly in his hands, looked up at the curious face filling one of the computer screens. His welding metal mask had been pushed up.

His personal ‘research lab’ (which, strictly speaking, was really the space allotted to him by Scilabs) consisted of two connected rooms; the smaller room, where he had first activated Forte that was open to the interns if they needed extra space to work, and the adjoining larger room in which he performed the portion of his work that demanded a more ‘hands-on’ approach, where the bulks of unfinished machines and dismantled mechanical contraptions lurked. It also contained the second computer Forte typically idled within. The hazy yellow light of morning touched the windowsill and the tops of buildings.

“It’s a surprise,” the doctor’s glasses glinted with the light.

From the screen Forte made a face at him and looked a mixture between glaring and being grumpy at him, but his voice held no true rancor.

“Dr. _Cossack_.”

Dr. Cossack grinned, tapping the spoon between his fingers against the side of the bowl in his hands.

“да , мой милый сын?”

" _Doctor_."

"Forte. Like I said, it's a surprise. Can't you wait for a little while longer, my boy?"

"No. Скажи мне, что это,” Forte seized hold of the leeway and badgered him for details, undeterred by his teasing. He could, he supposed, have foregone formalities and try to hack whatever files Dr. Cossack on it himself. It couldn’t be that hard to locate them. Forte knew Dr. Cossack’s network and the contents of said network like the back of his hand. Yet he wanted to hear it from his creator more than he wanted to actually wiggle the details from him. “It looks like a chair. But it’s… not a chair, that’s not its main purpose. I can tell. You’ve hooked it up to the network. Don't think I don't notice those strange electric pulses either, doctor. Is it one of your other special projects?”

“I’m sorry, Forte, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on secrecy, _just_ this once, okay?” was the doctor's verdict after he spooned some more soup into his mouth.

Forte cocked his head to the side slightly.

“Why?”

“It’ll spoil the surprise if I tell you now.”

“So it _is_ one of your special projects,” Forte confirmed. Hah! Like his own development project, the Auto-Navi project? What was this one's purpose? Forte wondered. "You..."

“Now, now," Dr. Cossack's face was the picture of innocence as he interrupted. The lines collected around his eyes crinkled. He didn't mind how Forte had pieced together information, despite his words. "The idea behind an _surprise_ is that you don't know what it is until you get it.”

"Oh,” Forte didn't fidget. It took him a few seconds to accept this was all the answer he would receive for the moment. "I suppose. Fine," he kept still, eyes still inquisitive. 

And even when still he gave the impression of the engine hidden behind the surface of a car or a plane, spinning gears and waiting for the petals to be smashed down, waiting to spring into action, waiting to explode with an overflow of energy and movement.

It is a common characteristic of the young; they have plenty of energy to burn.

“I dabbled in the field of robotics when I was a younger man,” Dr. Cossack relented in the face of Forte's curiosity and told him a little more cheerfully. The bowl of soup sloshed thickly when he set it to the side with a _clink_. He pulled off the metal welding mask and held up it to the light, remembering. “Nowadays, it’s not as a prominent field as it once was, but it’s useful for these sort of things. I don't have to restrict myself to programming alone, for one."

Forte nodded.

The rest of the morning passed without event. 

**.**

* * *

**.**

 

**8.**

**“DANGER! WARNING: INTRUDER IN CPU 7, INTRUDER IN CPU 7! DANGER!”** One of the security monitors whirred to life, blaring an alert far too late when the other program refused to submit their ID. The sound of footsteps approached, their owner unhurriedly drawing nearer and nearer.

**“COMMAND: CEASE AND DESIST! COMMAND: CEASE AND DESI—”**

A fist rammed into the blaring program with a sharp _crack_ , silencing the alarm abruptly. It sparked once, twice, then went dead. The fist that had crushed it remained in place, crackling jolts of electricity running up and down its arm before the intruder pulled it free.

The intruder cracked its knuckles and carried on with its business.

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

A security program NetNavi was torn clean in half, its upper half sent spinning into the nearest flat surface to explode uselessly and its disembodied set of lower legs wobbling comically on their own for a split second before disappearing in a burst of data particles.

Moments later, a second security NetNavi was hurtled headlong into the wall as well, the sheer force behind the impact sending chunks of rubble flying, a web of cracks radiating outward from where its back had collided with an unyielding surface.

Around the cyberspace of the computer area, others of their like littered the smooth expanse, pummeled into submission and severely damaged. The injuries ranged from the mildly wince-inducing (a NetNavi painfully rolled over, obviously struggling to function, and pressed a hand against the multiple fist-shaped dents in its armor) to the agonizing (several of the NetNavis prone on the ground had their kneecaps smashed in and holes torn in their frames held together by cables and wiring) to the outright brutal (over half of the defeated, whimpering programs sported the bleeding-data stumps of missing limbs and large portions of their skulls were crushed into a mass of cracks and broken metal.)

Forte stood amidst the carnage he’d reaped, and looked distinctly and coolly unimpressed.

The pixels streaming upward from the security program NetNavis’ wounds floated up past his darkened face.

“So _**you**_ lot are the new anti-virus combat-type NetNavis?”

Contempt made his tone withering.

“If you weren’t so _pitiful_ , I’d _laugh_.”

One of the remaining security programs that was still standing, and didn’t possess the good sense to start backing away from the NetNavi that wiped out the entirety of its unit without breaking a sweat, took offense to this. “Oh yeah?” It drew its fist back and swung, aiming to sock Forte from behind.

 _Idiot_.

Forte casually slipped out of the way and _moved_ in a burst of speed.

In the blink of an eye, the security NetNavi’s forearm suddenly popped out of alignment and exposed wiring bulged out of its elbow. Standing behind it, Forte began to bend its limb in a direction it was most definitively not supposed to ever go in.

The new-model security program shrieked in pain as its outer armour began to dissolve into pixels, the cords and mechanical wiring that its programming manifested as ripping apart and tearing with metallic squeals as Forte casually wrenched its arm out of its socket.

The expression on Forte’s face remained detached, only a hint of the distaste so alive and undisguised in his voice bleeding through.

“How can the likes of _you_ hope to defend the network?” he questioned.

There was nothing personal to his contempt; Forte had simply assessed the new design for the security Netnavis and found them deeply wanting in his eyes, found them _weaklings_. Weaklings shouldn’t proclaim themselves remotely capable of defending a single website, much less the entire network. The scientists could do better than this, surely.

 

 _Vween. Vweeeen_.

 

The floating screens of two windows blinked to life several feet above him, the scientists in white lab coats on them glaring down angrily at him.

“Good grief, Forte!” one said.

“Not again?!”

Another rebuked him with a weary annoyance, “Is this kind of behavior really necessary? Why do you keep _doing_ this?! We don’t need you causing this sort of trouble all the time.”

“This world has too many defects, systems with too many holes, too many _incompetent_ NetNavis!" Forte shot back in reply, quick as a whip. He hated incompetence. This pathetic showing Forte had just bore witness to had only cemented his belief he couldn't let such flaws in the network stand. He glared up at them. "I’m only _demonstrating_  all that.”

 

 _Vween_.

 

A new window popped into view next to the first two and unlike either of the others, this one gave Forte pause.

“Forte!”

At the sound of the man's voice ringing out, slightly out of breath after he had burst into the room at a run, Forte immediately released his grip on the maimed program's arm as if it had the audacity to sting him and let the security program collapse limply to the ground in a pixeling heap of disintegrating armor. He knew that familiar voice, Dr. Cossack's voice, _and_ he was doing that thing where he kind-of-yelled-but-didn’t-really, which meant he was upset. At him. At the events unfolding. Internally, Forte cringed a little.

“You will stop this! Now. And apologize to everyone,” Dr. Cossack informed him.

Forte hesitated.

“Dr. Cossack…”

One of the researchers, the one who had rather looked like he had swallowed a basket of thoroughly sweat-sour lemons, fumed and shook his fist while Dr. Cossack regarded Forte expectantly, awaiting his apology. “It’s the last straw, doctor! This NetNavi, he—he thinks he’s so _right_ about everything!”

The other researcher who had also had a look to his eyes like he fancied reprogramming Forte into having no tongue for his obstinacy, chimed in with an outraged hiss.

“And he shows _complete contempt_ for _us_!”

Forte interrupted before either of them would continue any further with their tirade against him, shamefaced. He delivered the words awkwardly, as if it was a struggle to fit them onto his tongue and he had to spit them as fast as he could lest he fumble them altogether.

"—I'm sorry, guys..."

The tension frothing about in the room took a metaphorical face-plant into the dirt at his sincerity.

“That’s the right spirit, Forte! Let’s all forgive and forget!” Cossack laughed heartily. The tension, still struggling back to its feet from the unexpectedness of the previous blow, wobbled and then, recognizing a losing battle for what it was, folded back onto its knees and dissolved altogether for a short time.

Dr. Hikari—the junior, the new intern who had been sent running by his fellows to fetch help, his fellows who by now knew there was one person in the entirety of Scilabs that Forte was guaranteed to listen to, and it wasn't _them_ —peered incredulously over the older scientist’s shoulder, abashed and amazed at how readily the NetNavi, who Yuuichiro had presumed to have gone haywire, had calmed at Cossack’s appearance. The NetNavi who, now that Cossack had swiftly diffused the situation, seemed to have lost his unapproachable aura and behaved as if he was only a child freshly rebuked by a parent.  

“It’s not as if Forte _wants_ to cause trouble,” Cossack cheerfully turned to his colleagues, palms outstretched. Trying to reassure them of his creation’s benign intentions now that nobody was snapping at each other's throats. Hikari glanced between them uncertainly. “He’s simply focused on troubleshooting our systems!”

“Yes, but… He...”

The researchers dithered, stuttering to a halt.

It wasn’t as if it made any true _sense_ to criticize a computer program, no matter how life-like it was or how good it was at faking an actual personality, for prioritizing its duties over humans’ feelings, over human ego. It was only fulfilling its function.

Forte made an inquiring sound.

“I _know_ , Forte!” Cossack spun back around to the monitor's screen and held up a finger, beaming knowingly at Forte from where his window floated in cyberspace. “If you _were_ out of control, well and truly, you’d wreck real havoc, right?”

Not _just_ content himself with deleting a few puny NetNavis of no consequence nor power. Not something like this.

(Right? Right, right, right?)

Forte smiled up at him, satisfied. It was good to feel understood, especially by the ones whom you love, by the ones whom you cherish. It was good to know somebody was always on your side. He looked Dr. Cossack full in the face, and his small confident grin lilted just a little higher at the corners.

“That’s right, doctor.”


	4. the world conceives its end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the saddest thing about betrayal  
> is that it never comes from whose you consider your enemies

**9.**

The sky was so blue it whitened to a massive halo of pale cream around the rim of the hot blot of light and heat that was the sun. Wispy clouds draped themselves across the horizon like streamers. The rush of the wind followed the cadence of the world even in the dawn of the networking age, beating out its rhythm like it had the day the earth had been nothing but an ocean of raw, primordial muck and magma, before land masses had scabbed over the volcanos, and the day it will be when the sun goes out and all is lost to darkness. It does not care about the affairs of the humans in the tiny, white buildings below. It does not care about the things they create. It was not capable of caring. 

It's still a beautiful day outside, that much cannot be denied. 

—It does not match Cossack’s current mood in the slightest.

“And now, we move onto our next order of business. Dr. Cossack.”

The speaker, rolling a fat pen about in his fingers, curtly checked the stack of papers fanned out before him. Most of them were either bills or sheets of indignant complaints. “Even after repeated infringements, you have told us that Forte would remain under control.”

Two seats down from Cossack at the table, the older Hikari massaged his forehead with his fingers, elbow leaning on the table. Some of the other department heads were already engaged in other conversations amongst themselves and paid scant attention. Doggedly, the speaker plowed on.

“Despite this assurance, it has come to our attention that Forte has destroyed forty-four NetNavis, crashed seven vital programs, and _that_ is not even taking into account the NetNavis’ he’s damaged but didn’t delete,” he shook his head, admonishing. Thinning silvery hair glinted in the fluorescent burn of the overhead strip lightning. “He’s hacked his merry way into our most secure browsers through the most potent layers of firewalls we have online. Frankly, it's rather embarrassing for the staff involved.”

Opening a folder, he squinted down at the many less-than-complimentary complaints printed across the paper in a scrawl before picking up and reading aloud one of them in a crisp tone.

“‘There is no place in the network for a NetNavi who flagrantly disrespects and disregards the wishes of network users’,” he said. “I’m inclined to—”

One of the researchers cut in.

“ _And_ thanks to him, we’ve lost more than a half a million of zenny worth in experimental programs! The delays this causes could potentially set us back _years_ if we don’t compensate for them soon,” the researcher went on, eyes fastening on the unperturbed face of the head of the Auto-Navi Project. He breathed through his nose, dryly. “Our clients don’t have limitless patience. Dr. Cossack, at this rate, I’m finally beginning to question whether giving you and that NetNavi of yours leeway was the right decision. Trouble-shooting is one thing, wanton destruction of our security systems… is _quite_ another.”

“Forte has not engaged in ‘wanton destruction of our security systems,’” snapped back Cossack, crossing his arms. “Every single incident that has occurred, he _never_ attacked indiscriminately, never went after anything but the firewalls, the security NetNavis, and focused solely on eliminating any inadequacies he’s encountered. The internal systems of Scilabs weren't damaged. It has even derived some benefits from his methods.”

“‘Inadequacies,’ hm?” a fleeting expression of disdain passed over the angles of the researcher's face. “Says somebody who has rarely gets tasked with re-programming things like security programs and firewalls from back-ups after that NetNavi _destroys_ those inadequacies. Without direct orders, I might add.”

Cossack’s gaze held steady.

“Security programs can be replaced,” he said, coldly.

“That doesn’t return the time lost,” countered the researcher.

“You _could_ take the time to input more improvements for the new models’ design. I’ve heard that revisions have been proposed,” he suggested lightly. It would save them all future hassle. The angle of lighting reflected off the lens of his glasses, turning them opaque and white and tinted for a moment. “For example, if the security programs were more advanced, Forte wouldn’t think they aren't able to defend the Alpha system.”

A department head seated on the other side of the table scoffed and waved a hand, mildly irritated in the privacy of his own mind that it had been deemed necessary to devote any portion of the regular meetings to a topic like this one.

It was only one little NetNavi after all, for all the ruckus it insisted on causing.

“Forte acts like _every_ security program we come up to protect the Alpha system is weak and riddled with bugs. I doubt anything our programmers can create right now will satisfy the little nuisance. You installed some pretty rigorous standards into him, Dr. Cossack—…”

Cossack, equally irritably, debated reminding the faculty members that he had not programmed nothing of the sort into his creation and that they were merely a side-effect. Among other things, he had provided a baseline, a template of personality traits to serve as a solid starter foundation for Forte _himself_ to either discard or further build upon and develop the rest of his personality with so he could function better as a NetNavi without an Operator. That was all. 

He didn’t. He couldn’t risk alienating them more than he already had.

The department head coughed.

“Anyway, there’s still the more important matter of the money he’s cost us in destroyed programs.”

“Maybe,” said another and gestured at the bills and the figures on them, eyes running over the gathering of people. “We should reconsider such a… —costly project as the auto-Navi is turning out to be. Its advancements are useful, true, but unless Dr. Cossack intends to keep on paying out of his own pocket—”

“Now, now. Don’t tell me your experiments with the Environmental Control programs weren’t costly, doctor,” Cossack said briskly and turned his head sideways to take in the new speaker, intent on deflating this argument before it got off the ground. “The disrupted ecosystems of the places used as testing grounds would beg to differ. They’re still working on remedying the damage. Monitoring, let alone _suppressing_ the power of the Earth is a titan’s task. There’s a reason, initially, the government was more interested in funding the proposed installation of a global weather radar to predict natural disasters rather than control them.”

Slowly, there were nods, over the grumbling issuing from the table's other side. 

Disposition soured, the speaker folded his hands into his lap, fingers interlaced, and scowled, brow wrinkling.

Remembering the reports he had read, Hikari stirred himself and nodded, “And unlike Forte, it will be years before the system is fully operational. _If_ we're looking at this from the point of how much fallout it can cause, compared to the Environmental Control's potential scale, Forte’s only a concern when it comes to like Dr. Cossack says, replaceable programs.“

Briefly, Cossack shot the older scientist an unprofessionally grateful look down the table.

“Each of Scilabs’ departments house two or three of the brightest minds in the world. Alternative energy sources, urban redevelopment, environmental renewal, geographical surveys, software engineering, computer networking… Nowadays, it’s true that cyber-related technology gets the bulk of our budget from the government, but the government is happy to give out research grants to such promising fields,” Hikari reassured them.

Cossack cleared his throat. “We don’t need to quibble over a minor setback. Scilab's standing is in no danger."

“But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be later on. We can't risk it,” one of the scientists' hands fell to the table with an exasperated slap. "Forte's actions—"

Cossack laid his words down patiently and carefully.

“While I can understand your frustration with Forte, I'd prefer it if you would stop assigning _malice_ where there is none when it comes to his actions.”

Several researchers frowned stiffly and looked doubtful. A few others were still devoting more of their attention span to their digital worktablets than the discussion at hand. One of the department heads leaned forward in his chair, shrewd eyes keen and bright.

“I, for one, endorse a compromise. I have no objections to continuing Dr. Cossack’s project—any data that would allow us to advance the programming of NetNavis beyond its current level is valuable,” he said mildly. “For now. However, if Forte continues on in this manner, there should be a guarantee that future measures _will_ be taken.”

There was still a mixture of half-hearted muttering and whole-hearted grumbling, but they soon relented.

“Very well. All in favor?”

The vote came close; it passed in favor, scratching past only a few votes ahead of the other options. There was a flicker-quick litany of thanks in Cossack's heart he does not give voice to. The speaker, the other man grunted under his breath, before recomposing himself briskly.

“That's well, settled then. In the meantime, see to it that Forte's put onto a tighter rein, Dr. Cossack. In hope that there will be no need for those measures."

Cossack wasted the brief but shining chance to say something extremely passive aggressive in his motherland's tongue because he was too busy debating exactly which comment to make, and whether it was best to make it at all. He was not the best at rocking the boat when the fact that every misstep could result in his son's wellbeing being threatened preyed on his mind.  

"And with that, I believe this topic is closed for the day. Unless anybody else has anything else about it to bring to attention?"

A pause.

"No?"

Good.

"Next on the agenda is... Mm. Now that we’re finished with the prototype Network’s structure, soon we can start rolling out the finalized version to the public. Some of the last components still need work, but Dr. Urawaka has several ideas… —”

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

**10.**

“Your security set-up is WORTHLESS.”

A scientist in a white lab coat nearly dropped the decompiler he was carrying in surprise at the exasperated face filling the screen of the wall monitor. The auto-Navi had no access clearance to the network for this wing of Scilabs! Or the private browser. He'd proofed all of his systems against intrusion by the auto-Navi. It didn't know any of the passwords. And he'd told its creator in no uncertain terms he didn't want that NetNavi making a mess in his computer systems.

The scientist was sure of that. Yet: “H… How’d _you_ get in here?"

The auto-Navi looked unimpressed by his stammering.

The answer occurred to the scientist five seconds after he asked it.

He _swore_.

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

**11.**

“So far, Forte has deleted _seventy-two_ NetNavis! And brought down _twenty-five_ major programs!”

“That’s the limit!” A researcher hollered.

This meeting wasn’t populated solely by the department heads and select but irate scientists this time; every other scientist with an axe to grind had turned out from their assorted nooks and crannies in the laboratories' campus to voice their distrust and wariness of Forte. Another slammed his fist down onto the table with a loud bang, sending the arc of papers spread out in front of him fluttering.

“Forte _must_ be deleted!”

A chorus of assent to this rippled down the table.

“I agree.”

“His usefulness is _over_!”

Cossack surged to his feet and slammed his hands down flat onto the table with a roar, knuckles white with fury, no longer able to contain himself in the face of how these people—his fellow scientists, his own colleagues were desecrating Forte’s effort. _His usefulness is over_ , like that was the total and sum of Forte's possible worth: how much use they could wring out of him before he wasn't useable anymore. How dare them. “How _dare_ you! Because of Forte, our systems have been purged of countless _dangerous_ defects!”

His voice pitched louder.

“You _know_ he’s different from other NetNavis! He thinks for himself! He makes his _own decisions_ and _acts_ on them! Forte is a _living being_!” Cossack exclaimed, astonished, furious at what he deemed their willful misunderstanding and their willful oversight of a fact. Surely they cannot ignore all the evidence piled before their eyes? Surely they could compare Forte to his predecessors and see the stark differences. They were men of science. They should know better than this.

The scientists were unimpressed and made no show of concealing it.

“Interesting assessment…”

“Of a mass of compiled data!”

“Yes, yes, an interesting, if somewhat unscientific sentiment,” A man’s voice cracked out, the unconcerned evenness of his voice more chilling than a shout. Cossack still felt as if he had been struck. “This is _no time_ for _sentiment_.” Cossack recoiled, almost too furious to summon up coherent words, then bristled and rallied himself with all the conviction in him. He would not allow them to delete Forte. His precious son. He would never allow such a thing come to pass.

Everybody made a go to talk all at once, merging into an incomprehensible racket and it only abated enough for Dr. Hikari’s voice to be heard two minutes later.

“Quiet,” Hikari's knee joints had creaked as he'd heaved himself to his feet in the midst of the disagreements. The old man didn’t want to shout. His flat tone was more of a detriment to continuing yelling at each other than a shout. “ _Quiet_.”

There was a baleful quiet, as demanded. 

Hikari sat back down. 

The silence was broken hastily.

The offender proffered his case without delay.

He said, “Please, Dr. Hikari. At this junction, at the rate Forte is going, our hard work is going to go down the drain. The Alpha system, the Network, net society, he's not helping any of it with all the... —the _messes_ he causes."

"When a tool breaks, you either fix it or put it aside and buy a replacement," another researcher shook their head. When a machine's term of usage expired, there was no _point_ in wasting the money on keeping it running. If a system broke down, you went through it and plugged out all the bad code, you didn't leave the anomalies alone to breed.

"Have you seen how coldly he treats the other NetNavis? No problems deleting his own kind. What guarantee do we have that Forte will not become a danger to _us_ , to humans?” demanded somebody.

“That may be true,” Hikari wearily allowed himself to admit that the risk existed and the other researchers’ fears, while fueled mainly by resentment, were not _so_ unfounded he could dismiss them without backlash. (Hikari very much wanted to do that.) He looked aged and immensely wrung out as he held up a hand, forestalling the threads of the bitter arguments around him. “But even disregarding what threat he could present to the Network, the truth is that Forte has repeatedly proven himself to be impulsive, needlessly aggressive, and ill-equipped in terms of displaying empathy towards others. I would agree that he has to be restrained, at least for a little while.”

“Dr. Hikari,” Cossack bit the inside of his cheek. He looked from him to the rest of the table.

There was triumph in their eyes.

One said, “Of course, that means—”

“ _Restrained_ , not deleted. Deletion is going too far,” asserted Hikari sternly. There was an apology in his voice, to Cossack.

Cossack got up, shoved his chair back in behind him, and walked out of the meeting.

He'd heard plenty.

He didn't need to hear the rest when he was already bitterly and perfectly aware of the outcome.

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

They stood on the walkway, metal support beams interlocking under their feet, looking down onto the teeming masses of humanity, ebbing and flowing and folding in on themselves, disappearing behind revolving glass doors and corners and bus stops, and into the city’s department stores and cafes and grocery shops and apartment buildings. The sun shone above, beginning to bleed its color into the clouds clumped closest to the horizon and the breeze coiled itself around them. The bulky blackness of massive shapes rose up around the two men, a forest of metal and pavement and the skeletons of skyscrapers.

“—can’t believe it, Tadashi. почему? I do prefer Forte’s confinement over Forte’s death, if I _had_ to chose, да but I don’t _want_ either of them to happen in the first place!”

Scarf wrapped warmly around his neck and jacket buttoned up to keep the wind off his shoulders, the elder Hikari sighed. “Mikhail, I believe you when you say Forte is acting with nothing but the best of intentions at heart. I do. Yet, he is too powerful to be allowed to run amuck while trying to blunder his way into fixing what he views as defective. I meant what I said.”

Cossack was pale, unhappy. His jaw clenched, a muscle working in it.

“But isolation? Isolation as punishment for Forte trying to _help_  people wouldn’t solve anything.”

Even in his advancing old age and declining health in despite of his strict exercise regime, Hikari could manage a veneer of pointedly  _testy_ with the best of them. The tensions in the laboratories, the magnitude of the Alpha system's approaching completion resulting in heightened tempers, and keeping the more high-strung ones away from each others' throats was a task into itself. “Tell that to several of our more suspicious colleagues. If this much ground is conceded, it'll appease them before they try to push harder for something worse. The complaints I've gotten...”

Cossack's short beard twitches.

"They can't be worse than the complaints _I've_ gotten."

Hikari gave him a _look_. A look that spoke of the joys of bureaucracy and a mountain of paperwork and red tape.

The younger man concluded the point.

“They don't listen to me either. Or him. They never listen to him, but I can get them to hear me out. Forte’s not a _malfunctioning toaster_ ,” Cossack fumed, obviously recalling one incident or another. His breath steamed out in faint, shivering impressions of mist, the hint of white hanging in the air before dissolving. Moisture dampened the fur lining of his coat. Japan's climate is much warmer, more forgiving than Sharo's harsh winters. Cold days still creep onto the islands.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Hikari said unnecessarily in reply to Cossack's continuing grumbling, meaning it, and cast his gaze away, towards the steady burn of darkening blue overhead. It really was a beautiful day outside. Yuuichiro would be back at the house by now, with Haruka. They would be wondering if he was planning to miss dinner again. He looked back at Cossack.

Who was still talking.

“I’ve tried talking to him about it, but it’s, well, Forte thinks what works for him, should work for everybody. It’s that competitive streak of his, I imagine. Failure only motivates him to try even harder the next time,” his shoulders slumped, helplessly, accomplishment and affection mingling with the resignation and fear. Operating with such a complete level of focus had its drawbacks. Cossack continued, “With time, I’ll get through to him, but...”

“Kids these day, hm?” Hikari said dryly, hands stuffed into his pockets. The old scientist's eyes were distant. He was thinking of another time. Several older times, in fact. 

Cossack managed a laugh.

" _I'm_ not the old codger here, you know."

“Even so, this new cyber-world is still coalescing, Mikhail,” said Hikari, coming back to earth with a jolt. “Forte’s existence is too much of an anomaly for some people to accept it. He _frightens_ them. Badly. Frightened people on the verge of something new often are tempted to do stupid things.”

“Hmph,” retorted Cossack, face abruptly souring. A scowl nailed itself to his face. He’d never had much taste for politics. And he found he lost even more taste for them when they dragged his family into it.

"And so Forte must suffer for the fears of the ignorant in our ranks? Because of their ridiculous grudges? Their pettiness? That's not the principle Scilabs was founded on nor what we joined it for, Hikari. Yet I can't overrule them. Я не могу согласиться, что это к лучшему. An option, yes, but not a good one."

Cossack's voice turned into vinegar.

"I cannot stop our colleagues from disliking Forte. No matter what it takes, I _will_ stop them from deleting him," this sounded less a reassurance, and more a stubborn statement of fact, "But there is little I can do about their mistrust of him."

He turned away.

Hikari did Cossack the courtesy of being honest to him.

“Fine. It wouldn’t be permanent, I promise you,” Hikari said, reaching out and gently squeezing his old friend’s shoulder, trying to convey the empathy he felt for Cossack’s plight. (Tadashi Hikari has already lost more than one old friend to both themselves and to others. He isn't eager for a repeat of the experience.) “It’s a temporary solution. Give it time. It'll turn out fine, I'm sure. Once Forte learns a firmer sense of self-restraint, this will blow over and the board will stop overreacting every time they get their egos pricked.”

Silence.

“... —You're being too optimistic about this.”

"My, my, I thought that was my _job_."

"To be an optimist?"

"Yes.

"An _annoying_ optimist?"

"Indeed."

Cossack pinched his nose between two cold fingers. 

"Well, I hope they're paying you overtime then."

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

**13.**

The security programs come, stand outside the cyber-cell when they don’t have other things to do, and gloat, though Forte has little doubt they were little more than mouthpieces, parroting what they had heard from their operators and creators. The sight of them curdled his stomach.

 _Ah, the mighty Forte_ , said one of them said once. _Locked behind a holding shield. And those limiters suppress his power to 1/10 normal. It’s rendered him nearly powerless_.

Another had chuckled over the thumming of background electricity, its tone chill with spurious pity.  _It’s a sad, sad sight._

_Does it gall you, Forte? You think you’re so much better than the rest of us… This is nothing more than what a rabble-rouser like you deserves._

_You’ve been let off too lightly for your transgressions too many times before now._

_It’s about high time the doctors saw reason_.

Forte had wordlessly gritted his teeth and refused to give them even a victory as small as his attention.

He would not dignify their sneers with a response.

Sooner or later, their interest in the farce and the insults would wear thin anyway and they would walk away, footsteps hollowly echoing off the walls. Out of a lack of anything else to do, Forte once estimated it took roughly three minutes on average for his fingernails to stop biting half-circled dents into his palms afterwards. Their visits, at least, were infrequent and short in duration, however aggravating the programs were _during_ them.

The only reason those stupid, _inferior_ programs had the courage to jeer at him was because of the bars between them and the limiters shackling his wrists. There would be no more laughter if that was not the case. They laughed because they had their power and he did not. In a battle, they wouldn’t have lasted five seconds against him. Weak. Defects. It was they that posed a threat to the system with the shame of their weakness, not Forte. He should have purged more of them when he’d had the chance.

Forte would not sit inside this cell forever.

They would done better to remember that.

 

 _Vweeen_.

  

At the familiar sound of a data window activating, Forte looked up, around, twisted behind him, searching—ah. _There_.

“How are you doing, Forte?”

Forte got to his feet from where he’d been hunched into a knot, trying to internally throttle the keen desire to kick things because it was a childish impulse and it wouldn’t get him what he wanted anyway. The desire itself had proved distressingly immune to strangulation, shouting matches, and—Dr. Cossack bowed his head.

“Stupid question. I’m sure you’re miserable,” Dr. Cossack’s face had gone tight with self-reproaching pain, eyebrows scrunched together, lips set into a thin line, and it looks wrong on him. Earnestly, trying to convince himself, Dr. Cossack said. “But understand, it was this or—… Or _deletion_.”

Both of them lapsed into a heartbeat of silence. Forte surmised Dr. Cossack's thoughts were weighting heavily on him, judging from this pause. In spite of or because of this, Forte’s mouth softens into a smile, his eyes flickering shut with the motion for a moment, then open again.

“I understand, doctor.”

Forte canted his head up, eyes warm in the shadow of his helm.

“So. Do they suit me?”

The question caught Dr. Cossack off-guard. He blinked.

It’s an abrupt change of subject, an attempt towards easing the atmosphere without grace to it; he's trying for humor. Forts helpfully lifted up his wrist, turning it so the energy disc clamped around his gauntlet caught the light. Wearing them left him with a faint sense of lethargy; he has never told Dr. Cossack of this and he doesn't plan to. (That would be an admittance of weakness.)

“The bracelets and anklets?”

Tactfully, Forte didn’t refer to them as limiters in Dr. Cossack’s hearing. He knew it hurts his creator that he had to consent to put them on Forte at all, thanks to what the other scientists had decided—Dr. Cossack knows Forte did not enjoy being limited anymore than he enjoyed being imprisoned. (Stopped up, crammed inside his frame like a bottle of gas with a cork jammed in the neck, Forte’s power pinched at him. It wanted an outlet he couldn’t _give_ it.)

So. An alternative term—the limiters looked like those trinkets a couple of the humans liked putting on, didn’t it?

Forte said lightly, “I hear _humans_ think such things are fashionable...”

He swept out his arms as if to encompass the cyberspace of the cell. “So, am I ‘ _stylin_ ’’?”

Dr. Cossack’s shoulders hunched, fingers curling over the edge of the keyboard. Their tight strain betrayed the forced easiness of his response, but fortunately, Forte could not see them from the computer screen, only the smile on Cossack’s face. “... Yes, Forte,” Dr. Cossack said, voice thick and quiet, holding back a sudden wave of emotion. "Yeah."

His throat closed, his eyes watering but remaining dry. Dr. Cossack kept smiling, cheerfully. (To a parent, there is the first of snares they cannot help but fall into. There is always an obligation felt that swayed them to put effort into keeping the child innocent of their parent’s weaknesses, their parent’s flaws. To spare them their burdens, for the better or the ill. To keep them from danger. 

Children did not need to be troubled with the weight of the world just yet.

They are only children after all.)

“You’re stylin’… fit to kill, even.”

After a nanosecond of running a search for the specific meaning in this context, Forte decided that was indeed a positive affirmation of his self-proclaimed and highly fashionable ‘stylishness,' and not a comment on his capability for murder.

Better still, Dr. Cossack looked cheerful again. So humor must have worked. Success!

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

The cyber-cell is too small: nineteen paces across and sixteen from back to front, hemming him in. Forte had counted.

Between the glowing crisscross of energy bars, there is what looks to be empty space, holes large enough to fit his entire body through easily. But Forte could reach out and press his hand flat against those empty spaces, like he had been sealed behind seamless panels of glass. No holes to wiggle through. It does not hurt Forte to touch the shield he was held behind, does not sting him, does not shock him. Dr. Cossack would never allow them to imprison him behind such a pointlessly hurtful thing. All it did is lock him in, nothing more, nothing less. Nobody got in, nobody got out.

He is not permitted distractions.

So, there was nothing available to do _in_ here either.

Making his punishment a very boring one indeed.

This is the decision of the board of department heads and unfortunately, as unhappy as they are that Dr. Hikari could force them to agree to this alternative to his deletion, and that Dr. Cossack would back him up on it, they are unwilling to budge on this. A NetNavi is a computer program. A computer program can only mimic becoming bored. Why should they allow him toys like running simulations or outside resources to ease something Forte did not actually experience?

He could break out of the cyber-cell, that was one possibility he had strongly entertained after a few days of this horrible monotony.

The cyber-cell—it was a security system, alibert one focused on keeping things _in_ rather than _out_.

And like all the security systems in this place, Forte was certain he could find the flaws in it, the miniscule imperfections. It was a good design but it has weak points. Weak points that Forte could exploit. Powerless or not, it would not that hard to chip away at them. A single crack, a bit of leeway, a bit of purchase and Forte could have forced it wide open, splitting it apart like an eggshell and he’d have been _out_.

Instead, Forte prowled around the cell, sometimes sitting down and tucking his knees up against his chest to alternate between staring blankly at nothing and having a glowering match with the wall like it'd done him great personal wrong, sometimes listening in on the low, furious murmur of conversations going on outside, Dr. Cossack arguing with another scientist one day, a department head the next. They rarely come to an agreement. Sometimes he hears Dr. Hikari too, but his voice is so soft Forte can’t make out what he is saying.

Only Dr. Cossack visited him daily.

(Which was fine, honestly.

There was not exactly other people in the laboratories whose company Forte would think to wish for.)

More than anything, Forte missed the early days when it was just the two of them in Dr. Cossack’s lab, and they could talk, _argue_ , and he could say whatever floated up to the surface of his mind and not think any deeper on it. He missed the glowing brands of dusty yellow-gold the sunlight left on the shelves and the gray flanks of the gleaming contraptions Dr. Cossack so loved building.

He missed being able to wander wherever it pleased him, when it pleased him.

 

When Dr. Cossack finally ran out of things to talk about after the first week and had exhausted all the other topics he'd reeled in after internally casting a fishing line out for them, he brought in virtual games for the two of them to play. (The excuses he gives the board of department heads when some of them make noises about it, to wiggle around their ban are ones he think they’ll be liable to swallow—blather about _ongoing experiments_ and _gathering data through stimulus_ and _you cannot expect me to put my central project_ on hold _for something like this now_ , _can you_.)

Like board games. They’d played board games before, Forte moving his pieces in the cyberworld and Dr. Cossack typing in commands for _his_ pieces onto the keyboard. Dr. Cossack had taught him the workings of a couple of children’s games from his homeland, and once he had borrowed some Electopian board games he’d called ‘Go’ and ‘renju’ and ‘shogi' and 'chess' and 'checkers' from the brown-eyed intern who was always hanging around Dr. Hikari’s laboratories.

Forte had played them several times, curious, then lost interest in them when the novelty had faded. 

As a sidenote, Forte wasn't _terrible_ at games like checkers.

But it turned out that he wasn't really good at it either. He didn’t have the patience for it.

Cossack's experience trumped Forte having the equivalent of a computer for a brain most of the time. His creation often had a tendency to leave gaps in his defensive lines and didn't think highly of employing tactics when he had the option to use blunt force. He pressed the offensive, attacked aggressively in lieu of an actual strategy. It is simple to exploit the holes.

But Forte rarely fell for a trick more than once (so long as he deigned to apply critical thinking skills and _paid attention_ ), and that forced Cossack into using new formulas for victory.

Playing board games with his creator was not an unenjoyable thing.

Win, loss, there were no stakes in those games—and if it had been with anybody else, this would have cheapened it to triviality in Forte’s eyes. As it stood, he made allowances for him. When Dr. Cossack’s time is up, he cannot leave the games with Forte and must pack them away, but Forte appreciated that it at least whiled away the hours.

 

Another week passed.

Then another.

The limiters are not removed.

 

Forte occupied himself with thinking, a past-time that was usually helped along by an abundance of free time and a great deal of silence with which to reflect, both of which he had in spades.

However much he tries to steel himself, Forte was anxious. He was bored of the waiting. Bored bored bored bored bored. Legs drawn up close to his chest, hands around the cold metal of his leg-guards; coiled into himself, the NetNavi rested his forehand against his knees. His fingers pressed down carefully, seeking solidity. The grid of lines lit him from beneath with its faint, blue glow; it cast the contours of his features in light. The lethargy pressed down on him; occasionally having to push off hebetude got him up, pacing back and forth, _wanting_ the movement, quick and disquieted though it was.

Forte didn’t fully understand why the humans wanted to delete him. It seemed so stupid to him.

If he found something that was somehow stronger (and was’t that was an amusingly ridiculous idea, somebody being _stronger_ ) than him, Forte wouldn’t be afraid of it. That’d be silly. He’d want to get stronger too, be spurred forward so he could take them down in turn. For once, there’d be someone _fun_ to rip apart pixel by pixel, to overcome, to smash down into the ground, to win against. Make the battle more than just a battle. Make it worth his while. Make victory taste all the much sweeter.

He wanted to win and feel like it had been a _challenge_ to win for once.

(Because of course he’d still _win_ , even if the opponent was stronger. One way or another. Forte doesn’t think to touch upon the possibility of defeat.)

Alone in the cell, Forte’s expression darkened.

Forte wanted strength to defend the network and respect and acknowledgement and so much more—but not like this. He didn’t want fear and he didn’t want dismissal and he didn’t want the ugly resentment that practically radiated out of some of the humans’ eyes whenever they looked at him when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. 

The humans, the humans that weren’t Dr. Cossack, looked at him with such cold eyes.

There was a naked sword hanging a hairsbreadth over Forte’s head: the threat of his own deletion, abstract and mitigated only by the distance he held it at. It leaves him restless, anxious. It was—it was. All the data Forte had gathered said he was in the right, that he was performing morally correct actions, that his right and proper behavior should earn praise from Dr. Cossack like it had before. He was helping, he was _trying_ , he wanted a future for this technology as much as anybody did, he wanted to be a part of the solid foundation they had build for that to happen and that meant getting rid of the defective parts so they could be replaced—but they wanted to kill him.

(Delete him. Kill him. Same thing in the end. Same end result.

Forte did not want to die.

He really really didn’t.)

Forte understood deletion on some level, what it entailed, and it meant not existing anymore. There would be a him one moment and the next, there wouldn’t be. Wiped away so completely that may have been he was never there at all.

He'd let them put him behind these bars because Dr. Cossack had asked for his patience the day he'd came from one of his meetings, pale with anger. Be patient and don't fight back for now, he'd asked of Forte. I _will_ fix this, but you must put up with it until I can. I'm sorry, my boy. He trusted Dr. Cossack unquestioningly, without reservation or doubt, to get him out of this safely but—(Naive of him, one knows. But he can hardly be chided for being blind to the future.)

Forte didn’t know what awaited him at the end of his stay in this cell.

Did the other humans even realize this was unpleasant in itself to him, the lack of knowing, the uncertainty prolonged day after day—? Probably not. It was not in his nature to be acquiescent. He could run, slip out when they’re not looking and run. He could ask Dr. Cossack to take off his limiters. He could… something. He could do _something._

But what?

Tired of juggling unsuccessful counter-arguments, scenario projections, and cause and effect analysis and nonsensical compiled data that refused to lead to the optimal solutions, tired of _thinking_ now that he no longer had the bulk of his duties to burn computation power on, when he did nothing, Forte closed his eyes and made himself resume sleep mode.

When it rose up obligingly to swallow him whole, unconsciousness was deep, cold and mercifully dreamless.

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

**14.**

Inside one of Scilab’s central control rooms, it was still and composed. The air was dry and sweet, and a coffee machine was tucked into the corner that made what any Scilab employee is happy to tell anybody is some of the most vile stuff they’ve ever drunk, but nobody has ever actually bothered to replace. The room was well-lit and if one ignored the out-of-place coffee maker, filled with the latest in modern machinery.

At one of the workstations, running off the comfortable rut of routine, an intern chugged back an energy drink, typing away at the machine in front of him. A technician he was friends with had called in sick on short notice; as a favor, he’d came in early and was pulling a few extra hours on his shift to cover his friend’s workload. It was dull work. With only half his mind on it, he pulled up a new window, selected, and clicked the link to fetch and transfer the data on the section of code he’d been working on like he had a million times before.

The link lit up, innocuously popped open a window and abruptly the screen went black.

It took a few moments for realization to first set in. The intern blinked, sat bolt upright for the first time in several hours, and stared. The chair creaked unhappily under him. He tapped the button on the control keyboard again. Waited for something to happened.

Nothing happened.

Energy drink forgotten, he tried to reboot. That didn’t work either.

Before the intern grasped his chance to offhandedly turn to the person in his neighboring cubicle and point out his unexpected issue or flag down a thin-faced supervisor, the problem became a series of problems that immediately made itself known to the whole facility.

Across the room, a shout went up from one of the senior scientists as tongues of electricity lanced out from a computer panel and bit him. The images on the flatscreen monitors set into the walls were breaking apart, awash with corrupted digital feedback and static, flickering lines of binary. A loud beeping of alarms blared. Leaning over his neighboring researcher’s shoulder to sneak a peek at his still-active computer, the intern eyed the code in mounting disbelief as it flew by.

People started yelling at each other, each trying to outdo the other in volume.

The machines whined.

Frantic activity spilled forth, a flurry of shouted orders raising above the pandemonium, fingers tapping and pecking away on console keyboards. What the problem? Was it a bug, virus, a malignant glitch in the system? Were they under attack? What had gone wrong, and where, exactly, was its source?

The answer it seemed, was _everything_.

Which was impossible.

 _Impossible_.

There couldn’t be a force on the planet that could infiltrate the Alpha system so thoroughly and seamlessly in a matter of seconds. Somebody yelped, snatched their hand away from the console. Forced to abandon their stations unless they fancied voltage jolting through their skin, several researchers moved to other machines.

Curtailing the barrage of misfiring programs was proving to be a magnitude beyond them.

After a hasty hijacking of the nearest empty computer, the intern and the others clustered around the console stared at the garbled sequences he could extract from the wall of windows popping on the screen. They yammered at each other, loud in his ears. Sweating, he swiveled the cursor over the code numbly, trying to understand. The numbers appearing were outside of his grasp; it was like the programming techniques of something alien, something inhuman. Too much bad data. Too much information streaming past at too rapid a pace.

The computer servers were straining to keep up with the demands of the high load, fans whirring desperately.

“ _We have major anomalies in CPUs 2, 4, and 7!_ ” somebody cried.

Report of anomalies were coming into the database from central processing units all over actually; as though every electronic device in the surrounding area was spontaneously malfunctioning, network traffic accelerating, the chaos spidering outward in all directions. The cursor hovered over the code. It jarred in place, then froze.

With a curse, the intern tried to jiggle it and make it move again.

Uttering a final dying screech as it overloaded, the intern’s computer gave up and exploded, multiple machines following suit.

Control systems went down.

The Alpha Revolt began.

 

_“Forte is no longer contained!”_

_“What?_ ”

 

And a scapegoat was seized upon.

There were shouts, barked orders in clipped tones that expected to be obeyed immediately for _all systems to go on full alert_ and _deployment of all security program units, now now now_. Unfortunately for the auto-Navi, oblivious to it all, that used to be contained on one of the building’s higher stories, these orders included arresting the short-bearded scientist who had been in the very process of releasing the holding shield when the control systems went down. 

(If only Cossack had made his move one day earlier. If only he had planned to free his creation just that little bit sooner. It was, in the end, only a matter of a few hours that made the difference. If only, if only.

He and Forte both would have been miles away from Scilabs the day the primordial internet went rogue.

Instead, he got caught doing the right thing at the very, very worst of times, and Forte...

 

 

Well.

He was left waiting for a kind voice that never reached him.) 

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

**15.**

_Fzzt._

_Fzz—fzzzzzt, ker_ -zap.

A thum, a crackle in his audio receptors—the bars are gone without fanfare. There are only the little indents of holes in the floor to testify they had ever been. Forte didn’t believe his eyes.

“The shield… ?” He rose to his feet, unguarded in his surprise. The NetNavi blinked upward. “It’s dropped.”

A pause.

“Dr. Cossack? Have I been set free?” Freedom, given back so unceremoniously after this long? Forte’s eyebrows rose as he questioned thin air, expecting whoever had eliminated the holding shield around him to reply. It couldn’t have spontaneously gone down by itself. Somebody else in the material world have to have deactivated it.

Instead, there was silence.

No data window appeared with a human’s face on it. Nobody spoke.

Then far off, in the distance—the sound of an explosion shuddered through the cyberspace. Startled, Forte froze in place for a split second, then wheeled around to attempt to distinguish which direction the noise had originated form. What was _that_? What was _happening_?

More distant explosions rang through the air, the ground trembling under his feet. After another moment’s hesitation, he rolled his shoulders and set off towards the commotion. Whatever was happening, Forte was not one for standing idly by. If there was a problem in the systems, he would find it and set it to rights, even if the scientists would yell at him for it. (Once they realized he’d gotten out of the cell anyway. Forte doubted they’d notice _that_ until much later.)

Whatever.

They could yell all they wanted. They always did. He _knew_ he was in the right. Dr. Cossack would back him up, Dr. Cossack would understand and sympathise with him, though Forte did feel somewhat guilty that he was dragging the doctor into more of a mess than he already had. He would have to be certain to make it up to him later somehow.

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

Sharp red eyes squinted.

“...—There seem to be some serious system malfunctions,” Forte said, examining the deep chasm that sundered the floor in front of him. Cyberspace had bent oddly around it, the curvatures of spatial distortions easily evident.

Queasiness prickled at him, just _looking_ at it.

Fractures in the fiber of the Alpha network like this seemed to have sprang up in a worrisome number of places. Was this the cause of the holding shield’s collapse? His brow furrowed in contemplation. Whatever error was plaguing the systems—it wasn’t much of a stretch to guess an anomaly on _this_ scale might have cut off the power supply that had kept it running. … No, Forte shook his head, cross. The theory was sound, yet. Something about it didn’t ring true to him. The bars had gone out too quickly, too smoothly for it to be an error. 

Forte blinked.

Multiple energy signatures—moving towards his coordinates?

“Eh?”

He glanced to his side. And it was only the forewarning _ping_ from his built-in radar and inhuman reflexes that saved him from the first volley of buster fire.

 

Forte skidded to a halt, crouching when he came to a stop several meters away, arm coming up half-way as if to instinctively shield his face from any possibility of stray debris. Confused, his eyes widened as the lines upon lines of security programs circled around him. His side stung; charred by the bolts of energy. Tendrils of smoke wafted out of their arm cannons; they’d fired with the intent to delete. They stood on the cubic structures and on the floors, and their voices boomed as one.

“ _FORTE!_ FOR THE CRIME OF SYSTEMS DESTRUCTION, YOU ARE TO BE DELETED!”

Then they rushed him.

“Systems... —destruction?” Forte said, taken aback at both of the ferocity of the assault and the new information.

The _why_ of it clicked a nanosecond later.

“ _NO!_ IT ISN’T ME!” the fevered declaration earned no mercy as they closed in on him. A hulking program slammed into him and Forte’s shoulder caught the majority of the initial momentum from being flung backward and he hit the floor twice before flipping into an airborne ball and landing back on his feet. He staggered, off-balance.

More buster fire, more security programs plunging in a rush to charge at him.

“We got ‘im!"

"Don't let him get away!"

"Eliminate the traitor!”

“Wait!” Forte protested in vain, indignant, dodging the buster fire coming down on him. “I never betrayed anyone!” The security programs, unfortunately, weren’t interested in letting him give his case in showing them he had _nothing to do_ with this… this, whatever it was, damnit!

“You’ve had this coming for a long time, Forte!”

Forte growled in frustration.

More explosions crashed into the ground under his feet, both from the attacks being lobbed at him and the widespread malfunctions. The systems were falling apart around their ears at this very instance, and they were wasting time that could used _fixing it_ on _him_? It was absurd. Who was foolish enough to order that? Why wasn’t somebody intelligent like Dr. Cossack stopping them? Where was Dr. Cossack?

The weight of the limiters, leaden around his wrists, and around his ankles, still hung there. Forte had neither the opportunity nor the motivation to pull off this ‘system destruction’ by himself. That was transparent to the point of being laughable. This fact seemed to have completely slipped these imbeciles’ minds.

“YOU PEONS!” he roared and lashed out, utterly fed up with their relentless heckling. They were many, armed to the teeth, and he was one. He had no active weapons installed. He didn’t need them. The entirety of his body was a weapon.

“ _ **GET OFF MY CASE!**_ ”

He took a certain degree of grim satisfaction at the solid impact of his foot with a security program’s head, severing it from its spine, followed by him indiscriminately ripping any program within his reach to shreds. (It wasn’t as easy as it would’ve been had he no limiters.)

One of the security programs gaped in shock, confidence rattled, cringing backward despite their far superior numbers. It took the uproaring of the others to rally it forward with the rest of the mob again.

Stubbornly, Forte stood his ground to meet them.

Yet the confusion persisted, straying into a corner of his mind and filling it with questions.

 

* * *

 

 _Dr. Cossack! You_ **must** _know the_ **truth** _!_  

 

* * *

 

Kick.

Punch.

 _Duck_.

Jump— _crack_ , watch the metallic innards of a security program go in all directions from his blow.

Twist.

After weeks in the cyber-cell, the rhythm of battle comes back to him like he had never left it, easy and mindless, but there is no joy in it. There is no joy is scrambling away from these attacks obviously aimed to delete, there is no fun in their shouts and accusations, there is nothing fun about being outmatched in terms of both numbers and power.

(Forte was puzzled. Fighting was _supposed_ to be fun, had always been fun. To him, anyway. Even if it was extremely dull since there was nobody equal to him to fight. Even if it was unsatisfying to break the security programs since they were _weak_. This was not fun. This was not the joy of battle. This was stressful and confusing and so very aggravating. Egro, it couldn’t be a fight. But they were displaying aggression towards him, they were verbally and physically attacking and—what was going on here?)

 

* * *

 

 **Why** _haven’t you_ **intervened _?_**

 

* * *

 

Punch.

Deflect.

Grab.

Kick.

Dodge.

He twisted to the side, feeling a mace whistling past his cheek and dodging the ball-and-chain that came crashing down into the floor, sending a web of cracks rushing through the squares of tiles. (Idiot, using a weapon so unwieldy and so prone to getting embedded in things, leaving one vulnerable to a counter-attack.)

He smashed the closest security program to him, and the next and the next and the next, and they still wouldn’t stop attacking.

 

* * *

 

 _I’m_ **innocent** _!—And you_ **know** _that!_

 

* * *

 

Slide.

Block.

Divert.

Kick—thun- _nck_ , leave a inch-deep dent in the shape of his foot in one of their chestplates, the force rupturing its integral programs. Knock it to the ground.

Shift.

Hit.

Turn, kick again, give ground before another wall of explosions, put distance between them and him, jump over a buster shot, attack back. Why wouldn’t they listen. Why wouldn’t they stop. Why wouldn’t they get it.

 

* * *

 

 _Please stop them! This is all a misunderstanding, I’ve done_ **nothing** _! Come help me!_

 

* * *

 

 

A possibility—an unwelcome thought, doubt occurs to him.

He faltered.

 

* * *

 

 **Dr. Cossack** _… ! Oh, no… No, you_ **didn’t _…_**

 

* * *

 

Forte, distracted by the confused thoughts raging silently in his head, hesitated for a slight moment.

(And that hesitation cost him dearly.)

He didn’t realize the blow had landed until the slash had laid him open from hip to shoulder, rent his data apart and sent pixels spraying into the air. His pupils diluted to pinpoints, Forte teetered backward, body curling around the lack he suddenly found below his collarbone. It was too sudden, too jarring for him to even scream. He—it—

What?

Nobody had ever landed a blow on him before. 

“GIVE IT UP, FORTE!” cried the security program. Forte would have spit in its face had the novelty of the searing agony not been splitting his chest, and had it not spoken its next, damning words. It almost _sneered_ them, the concentration of its derision obvious.

“Your deletion was a joint decision by _all_ of the scientists!”

Gravity tilts.

 _Thump_.

Forte’s impact with the ground lifted small puffs of dust and debris upward.

Abruptly, the pain in his chest seemed insignificant in comparison to the violent shock those words torn through him with. Forte reeled, mind going blank as he tried to process it. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t understand it. He _wouldn’t_ understand it. He realized the implications that loomed all too well, but he refused to accept them.

He refused he refused he refused.

It was strange.

The ground was solid beneath his shoulders—yet he felt unsteady. Disoriented. Was this what it was like for humans, to experience vertigo?

“You sure gave us a lot of trouble,” one of the programs was saying.

Of course he had. For every one security program NetNavi that had came at him, he’d destroyed five more. Forte wasn't interested in being deleted. Rubble, limbs and dented metal plates laid in pieces among the rubble, melting away in flecks of data. Not all of them however. The ones still standing were… The security programs laughed, jeered, looking down at Forte. His vision swam. Static crackled thinly at the edges of it. They would not _dared_ treat him like this had he not been sealed with the limiters. It was the appearance of weakness that encouraged them.

Cowards.

“My Heat Blade took the spit outta’ you, though!” crowed the one who had sliced his navi emblem open, like it was something to be proud of.

 _Shut up_ , Forte thought.

His head hurt.

His chest hurt too.

Everything hurt, hurt more than Forte was capable of rationalizing away in a last-ditch, scrabbling, desperate attempt to keep the world in a shape that made a modium of sense, and lock down on the increasing internal disorientation in favor of a directly-proportionally swelling rage.

They were gloating. Gloating, laughing, looking _down_ on _him_. Laughing at his foolishness, _oh that’s cute._

_He thought he still had somebody like Dr. Cossack to hide behind, to protect him._

_Oh, that’s adorable that he thought there had ever been anybody on_ his _side_.

Forte rather fancied deleting them, rather fancied stabbing through _their_ navi marks, straight through their frames, in and out, data crumbling under his fingers and seeing how _they_ liked it, but his mind was still jammed in its refusal to process what was happening.

“That limiter was a good idea too.”

 _Shut up_ , Forte thought, more wildly than before at each obvious and succeeding word. _Shut up_.

His audio receptors were ringing in the most pecticular way. The edges of his vision were frizzling with static again, darkening. Were... Were they—they, the security programs—speaking mere feet from his body, or from a great distance away?

Somebody said, pleased.

“Yeah, _Dr. Cossack_ knows his stuff.”

Static, again.

Hands involuntarily curled into fists, uncurled, scraped weakly at the floor. Dr. Cossack. His head hurt his head hurt his head hurt. Dr. Cossack... His chest hurt. Dr. Cossack had made his limiters and put them on him. Dr. Cossack was one of the scientists. Dr. Cossack... had not visited him today. Each of these thoughts tumbled through his head, a jarring boulder in a rockslide. Static. A bleak, dizzying emotion opening up inside, buoying him upward like hot air and expanding far quicker than he could contain it; himself a skin so thin, stretched too tight over it like the surface of an ill-made drum. 

Then the Alpha system shuddered around them, quaking—a faint _rumble_ building up force. And that force snapped free as a thunderclap of sound folded over them. 

(Which was rather a good thing—momentarily, it took all attention away from Forte.

Nobody saw his face in the instance those words sank into him.

He’d rather looked as if somebody had not only reached into his chest, gripped his core program and ripped it out, but also taken the time and effort to carefully position it on the ground in front of him, stomp it into fragments under their heel, and then cheerfully set the fragments on fire.) 

After the thundering sound, the blast of explosions reached them first; it whipped the security programs off their feet like a giant hand swooping down to carelessly knock down lines of toy soldiers, and sending them sprawling to the ground. Its second shock wave was a hammer-blow that took others soaring to smash into walls, quaking the floor mightily. The noise of more violent explosions joined it. Pillars of smoke snaked higher and higher. The shrill wailing scream of the alarms, incessant. Too loud.

A high electronic buzzing, before: 

 **“ALERT: DESTRUCTION CONTINUING IN THE ALPHA AREAS, 1, 2, AND 3. ALERT: ALL SYSTEMS ARE REPORTING HIGH LEVELS OF UNSANCTIONED ACTIVITY. ALERT: MAJOR ANOMALIES HAVE SPREAD FROM CPUS 2, 4, AND 7 TO CPUS 8 THROUGH 12.”**  

All the security NetNavis collectively did their equivalent of stuttering in surprise. 

 **“UPDATE: THE SOURCE OF THE SYSTEM DESTRUCTION IS NOW BELIEVED TO BE THE ALPHA SYSTEM ITSELF!”**  

Forte felt something in him go cold.

The security programs were at a loss. Battered and singed, they clammered up in ones and twos to their feet and huddled in loose, aimless clusters. Their single optics swiveled to-and-fro.

Finally, one muttered angrily to its fellows, “So... it’s _not_ Forte’s doing?”

There was the pain in his chest and the building pressure behind his eyes and this. There was something contracting, shuddering violently, then splintering apart and stabbing into the rest of him with its shrapnel in Forte’s chest, spreading that cold through his body; he had never been in this much pain. Forget the pain in his chest. This. _This_.

He had not even known to be in this much pain was _possible_. 

 **“INSTRUCTION: ATTENTION, ALL UNITS—JACK OUT! FURTHER ORDERS WILL BE GIVEN ONCE MORE INFORMATION HAS BEEN MADE AVAILABLE.”**  

The remaining security programs’ (Forte’s violent resistance to their goal of deleting him had reduced their once-superior ranks greatly in number) uncertainty and bafflement at being assigned the incorrect target vanished immediately from their minds upon receiving a direct order from authority. As one raggedly mass, they shouted their affirmations and logged out of the Scilabs mainframe and to safety. Only a single security NetNavi whose resentment temporarily overwhelmed its need to obey orders, or well, not creatively reinterpret them remained on the battlefield: alone with the rubble, the derezzing lumps of deleted or destroyed security programs, and Forte.

“Forte,” it said, the venom of its hostility as undisguised as a rank piece of roadkill. “If you think you’ve been let off, think again.”

Forte, data streaming from his open wound and who was now too busy struggling to think through a fog of the pain and the cold to consider the possibility of _being let off the hook_ and instead considering the simpler dilemma of _how to stand up as soon as feasible_ again, looked up.

For the first time in his entire and very short life, Forte was afraid.

“The order for your deletion still stands,” the security program hefted its cyber-sword up, looking down upon Forte’s agonized form as one would regard an especially annoying example of vermin with its legs crushed in a bear trap. Its eyes. _Those_ eyes. Forte recognized them. Those same, cold eyes as the eyes of the humans that had watched him with so livid resentment.

From his position on the floor, Forte stared up at the Netnavi, eyes completely hidden by the shadow of his helm. He—(months ago, he had gripped the security NetNavi’s arm and _twisted_ , the bulky armour useless against him, the exposed wiring that was bulging out of its elbow protesting the rough treatment as the NetNavi shrieked. Almost absent-mindedly, he had registered the new data he had just unintentionally acquired via the GetAbility. A ‘ _Heat Blade_ ’ battle chip? He’d dump the data from his systems later, when he found time to)—felt a surge of something raw and burning welling inside him, faster and faster and the boiling point wasn’t too far off—

“You’re gone, Forte!” The security program lunged.

 

 

Simply put: 

Forte snapped.

 

 

 

(There was a limit. A certain tolerance level. A point where one’s patience capped off. Every creature had one, from the meanest animal to the most placid person, and it was the boundary line at which they could be pushed no further, not without their sanity abruptly announcing it was taking a vacation and being replaced in the meantime by copious amounts of screaming, a lot of bloodshed, and a few noses being bitten off. Forte had not been aware where his own lied.

Yet at some point, one runs out of patience for people telling them they wanted you gone.)

He had enough. He had _enough_ of being knocked down and locked in cages and belittled and held back and restrained by these stupid, narrow-minded vicious little _insects_. They were nothing. Nothing, and they presumed to do _this_ to him?

 _ **Enough**_.

The cold inside was swallowed by red-hot burning.

As quick as blinking, the black NetNavi’s muscles tensed—hastily grabbed—(so what if all but 1/10 of his power was blocked, kept inside by the limiters. That was only inside. Outside power was up for grabs. He’d done it before. _Draw the power outside_ in _, focus it_ , _push it_ out)—condensed the loose data floating around from the system malfunctions into himself, then came the moment of _release_ , a strobe of white light bursting around him; before the belligerent security program’s red blade hit its mark, the sword shattered like plastic against the makeshift barrier.

The security program jerked backward with an outraged squawk.

Now, these limiters, he wanted them _gone_ —

The discs clamped around Forte’s wrists and ankles tore like wet tissues, breaking down into swirls of pixels which Forte absorbed as he forcibly overwrote them, their function with his power. (Data was data was data, no matter what it used for or where it came from. It could used. By that logic, if it could be copied, it could be absorbed.) He was on his feet before they fully unraveled, snarling and wild-eyed.

His vision went hazy and burning and—

There was a split second of weightlessness and heat, and a blinding clarity of what is happening and what he is doing—fire raced up his arm, a blade that was his arm, bits of loose data flecking off—and in one swift movement, he darted forward and sliced the security program cleanly in two.

It came apart—white and smooth armor, parting as though it was cheap tinfoil before Forte’s fury.

Despite lacking a mouth or eyebrows, the look of disdain on the security program’s face warped into a portrait of utter disbelief as the sensation of fire seared it in half and its data crumbled into rapidly pixeling fragments. It had lost to its own power. 

Heat Bl… B—lade? Forte had its power, but _how_? There was no way? That was a power unique to it. So… How? How, how, _ho_ —?

  

It imploded, the explosion sending a gust of displaced air billowing past Forte.

“I…” he snarled.

The burning inside him _roared_ to life, bubbling and clawing and barreling from his toes through his gut up his throat. Forte put a name to it for the first time in his life.

Hate. Rage. His eyes shone with it. Betrayal. A sense of betrayal so potent it is unbearable. Anger. An anger, visceral and _present_ , powerful: he could physically feel it grip him in its talons, squeezing tightly.

It overwhelmed him, fogging over everything else so in a world that was no longer what he thought it should be, the single emotion he make sense of is a raw desire to lash out in response to this hurt, hurt, retaliate, _punish_. It’s new, new and so palpable in comparison to all that Forte had felt before, they are made to seem but pale, ghostly things of no substance. 

(Disgust.

Misery.

Sadness.

Despair.

Pain, so massive and clotting Forte felt sick with it. Small and sick to the point he wanted to curl up in a ball in some dark corner and never leave it. If you attempt to destroy something, if you agree to that something’s destruction, that means you considered that something worthless. Useless. No, worse than useless.

 _Unwanted_.

If you attempt to destroy something, you had no belief in it at all.

And the only response he had to the despair threatening to engulf him to fall back upon was the ugliness of his newfound rage.)

He made a hiss of a sound, choking the burning back down. “I am _through_ … with _this_! **With _everyone_!** ”

With his traitorous _creator_ , with the scientists, with the worthless security systems, with running around trying to fix their mistakes, with fruitlessly attempting to help whose whom saw him as some kind of disposable tool to be discarded in return, with Scilabs, with humans. All of it.

Forte was done with it all.

He had learned his lesson—and learned it well.

 


	5. the hole that isn't your grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I crawled, near deletion, through the Internet—this is the wound they inflicted upon me! As I began to fade, I swore revenge on the humans! And I survived thanks to the ‘GetAbilty Program’ you installed into me! [...]”_

**EPILOGUE**

**16.**

Dr. Cossack hadn’t taken a shower in days.

Outside the sideroom he was using, people were coming and going, talking, yelling, jostling against each other as under the glaringly white, cold lighting they raced to and from one end of the warehouse Scilabs’ had commandeered from the NetOfficals to the other. Shoes squeaked on the floor. Metal clinked against plastic. 

Computer consoles and monitors hummed with data, a low tide of miscellaneous noises Cossack wasn’t listening to.

His jaw tight with fury (how could Scilabs treat Forte like this? How could he have allowed it to accelerate to this point? Too many things had not gone as he had envisioned), Cossack typed on the keyboard. A jury-rigged mass of computer equipment was laid out around him, wayward loops of connector cables falling off the edge of the desk. He’d hooked up his PET to the bulk of an old-fashioned laptop and cobbled together what he could to get more out of it than it was designed to give.

His creation retained a link to his PET since Cossack had once used it back when Forte was newly activated to transport Forte to different servers and for board meetings on rare occasions.

 

If he could _just_ —

 

With the buggy Alpha System expanding and forcibly assimilating every network it came into contact with it at record speeds, brushing off all attempts mounted to contain it—using the hub of the laboratories’ Alpha-based computer systems to access the internet was as completely out of the question for him as it was for the rest of the scientists and technicians currently populating the warehouse; he’d resorted to more unorthodox methods. Hence the laptop, thick and chunky, the connector cables, the soldered motherboard. His array was not as impressive as the two Hikaris’ on-site set-up (how the father and the son managed to rig up a makeshift _satellite_ with only out-dated broadcast equipment and some junk hardware they’d found in the warehouse’s dusty depths was beyond Cossack) but it was workable.

And the global communications satellites were still operational as the Hikaris’ had demonstrated in the first days of the race to shut Alpha down.

 

If he could just piggy-back this signal off it...—

 

Somebody had thought to save the coffee machine from the disaster zone. It spat out cups of even worse coffee than normal; everybody who had a taste for caffeine drank it down in gulps. Those who didn’t, made do.

The old coffee machine was there.

But Forte was missing.

Cossack flatly refused to believe the others about Forte’s deletion when they told him of it; he’d seen his son alive and well, standing up from where he'd been sitting and looking about in confusion, right as he had released the holding shield, right before the police had dragged him off the premises protesting their accusations of treachery.

Forte had been _fine_.

 

(That had been nearly a week ago.

Days wasted sitting in prison while the police panicked and Scilabs panicked, another day wasted getting through all the legal process of a severely harassed-looking Hikari bailing him out (Cossack had no idea who had planted such convincing fake evidence that he and Forte were responsible for all of the errors and as he learned during the bailing-out process, neither did Hikari nor his son, Yuuichiro, but when he found out exactly _who_ had falsified the Scilab access records and used him and his _family_ as a _scapegoat_ , Cossack was going to—) and the last several days spent frantically working to delete a force that was literally threatening to eat the internet.

At least Hikari had returned the PET the police had confiscated to him.)

 

He had to believe Forte, limiters on, could have fought off all the security programs and gotten away. Forte must have realized the situation he was faced with for a hopeless one and _for once_ , Cossack hoped, for once in his stubborn son’s life, Forte must have had the _sense_ to size matters up and beat a strategic retreat. Cossack had to convince himself of that.

—If Cossack could still use it and if he could piggy-back the signal off the global satellite network, the old link to his PET should work.

He could contact Forte, find out if he was injured, if he needed repairs, help him, protect him.

**.**

* * *

 

**.**

The steady clicking of fingers typing on the laptop continued.

_Click click cli-ck._

Slowed.

Paused.

Cossack finished up the routing for the signal, dragged down a single icon labeled ‘Forte.exe’ to click on it, highlighting it and then opened up a series of windows, which copied themselves and then disappeared. The laptop hummed as it thought. A new data window popped up—

 

 _ **[CONNECTION LOST]**_ blared across the screen in bold, painful red.

 

What?

No. It couldn’t be.

The link to his PET should have…

There was no reason why it shouldn’t be able to connect...

It didn’t matter. He’d lost too much time already to waste more of it dithering.

Cossack switched tracks, the clicking of his typing going faster as he started up the programs of a new command line to a different program. If the old link to the PET wasn’t working for whatever reason, the tracker he had implanted into Forte’s limiters had to do then. That program was entwined deeply into the limiters’ coding. If the limiters worked, so did the tracker program.

And the limiters would continue to function so long as the black NetNavi did.

Removal was impossible unless Cossack was the one to do it, or Forte himself figured out how to undo it, and deactivation would only occur if Forte’s core programs no longer functioned. If Forte’s core programs still functioned, Forte could be hiding on another continent altogether, and Cossack still could have located him.

(He hadn’t wanted Forte moved anywhere where he couldn’t find him after the orders for Forte’s confinement had been issued—and if the other scientists had tried to go behind his back for it, the tracker program would have ensured Cossack would have been able to rapidly put an end to _that_ nonsense.)

Yes, this would— 

 

**_[(OUT OF RANGE) — SIGNAL LOST]_ **

  

—Cold nausea sunk its claws into the knobs of his spine and dug down hard.

Cossack sent the command line again.

Quite unsympathetic to the programmer’s building desperation, the same message blinked insistently at him. The signal was finding nothing that said the tracker program was still active.

Please. Please, let it not be true.

Forte must have escaped.

He must have run and the tracker program was merely suffering a ill-timed malfunction, Cossack insisted to himself. Or Alpha's digital interference was intercepting its signals somehow. Forte must have outran the security program NetNavis ordered to see to his deletion, the scientists who labelled him a traitor, the NetOfficials who eyed him as if he was a danger, and the police who had held him in custody, and Alpha’s on-going, terrifying rampage.

Forte must have, no, he  _had_ to have outran them and survived.

… His son had to be alive.

 

(Yuuichiro, Tadashi’s boy, had caught up with him after the initial mayhem of hauling him out of jail had died down and said he’d gone looking for him when the order to delete Forte had been first put out; he hadn’t known he’d already been taken into custody by the police. Standing in front of him with his fists clenched, the intern’s demeanour had been stricken. He’d apologized hesitantly, said if only he’d been _faster, maybe_ he could have gotten there first. Maybe he could have stopped them from attacking Forte sooner. Maybe, maybe, maybe. He hadn't _known_. He hadn't.

In his eyes, Cossack had seen that he’d thought Forte as dead as the rest.

Unlike the rest, there was no glee over it for Yuuichiro, just a mournful knowing in the intern’s gaze. It seemed over a lifetime ago he’d first met him in the Scilabs staffroom, out of breath and shouting for Cossack’s help.

Yuuichiro wasn’t stupid; he could put the pieces of the puzzle together and guess why Forte had been so conveniently blamed for a crime he had nothing to do with, and why nobody had bothered to stand up for him and look any deeper into the false accusation when it’d been presented to them. All the fake evidence in the world wouldn’t have mattered if not for the fact that misunderstanding, loathing, and panic make it so very easy to make others your scrapgoat.

One don’t even _need_ to hate the scrapgoat—only stand by and stay silent as the ones who did made the decision, simply not care enough to contest it. There were some like that in the laboratories. They hadn’t hated him, but Forte had never endeared himself to them either.

Why kick up a fuss over the deletion of a simple computer program? It was like scrapping an old car or tossing out a broken cell phone.

So, if it was convenient, if it was understandable, why protest it?

Yuuichiro's eyes had said all and that more.)

 

He turned back to his PET, the cords coiling out of it jerking as he picked it up off the desk. He had Forte’s ID data registered; he could wirelessly send him a message through that without the old link. He bent forward, an ache in his stiff back complaining.

Cossack held his breath.

  

 _Beep._  

 _Beep._  

 _Beep beep beep_ beep _—_ beeeeeep _._

 

**_[COMMUNICATION FAILED]_ **

  

Cossack sat back, hard.

Then he tried again. And again. Each and every one of these failures was a rusty nail being driven too-slowly into his chest, inch by inch. Still, he tried.

He couldn’t make himself give up on Forte.

  

_**[COMMUNICATION FAILED]** _

  

_**[COMMUNICATION FAILED]** _

  

_**[COMMUNICATION FAILED]** _

  

Forget rusty nails. The weight of his own failure crushed down on Cossack as if he had an iceberg dropped down onto him.

The doctor sat alone in front of the glowing screen of the empty PET for a long time.

**.**

 

* * *

 

 

**.**

**17.**

Hikari found his colleague at the airport by accidentally tripping over his suitcase.

A baggage transport vehicle overloaded with luggage had went lumbering past, Hikari stepped to the side to let it pass, and stumbled right into the unsuspecting suitcase resting by the feet of the man slumped, dozing on a chair in one of the lines of airport seating, eyes twitching fitfully under their lids. The suitcase had been packed hastily and closed shut poorly; its contents went spilling onto the worn carpet, the fabric stained with a generation of spilled sodas and stale fast food.

“ _Ack!_ ”

The man there jerked back to wakefulness. He blinked, rubbing his face. Then he looked down, the lines folding around his eyes deepening. “Eh?” Crumpled suit wrinkling further, he was off the chair, trying to put the contents back inside in moments. 

“I’m sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going, let me help there—” Hikari was apologizing and bending down to help him, knees creaking, before he fully realized what had happened.

“No, it’s nothing, I—” Cossack looked up. The mouth behind the unkempt beard hardened.  

“—Oh. Dr. Hikari. Good morning.”

He looked away.

Silence shoved itself between them.

“Good morning,” Hikari cleared his throat and cast about for words to say, his mind unable to stop itself from going back to another man, one far more prickly and far less willing to listen, another parting, and the arguments that had devolved to swapping bitter accusations from both of them. Albert hadn’t responded to any of his emails afterwards. He started with, “I... went to your house. To talk. You weren’t there.”

“I’ve cleared it out,” Cossack replied, succinct.

Hikari recalled the blank walls and an empty bedroom and a small table with just one chair to sit in inside the kitchen he'd seen in the deserted house. He said dryly, “I noticed.”

Cossack shrugged, “I’ve already paid the monthly bills. It’s the local housing agency’s problem to sell it off now, not mine. I kept it tidy. They can hardly complain. It should fetch a good price on the market.”

Unsurprised, Hikari gave a small nod.

“You’re washing your hands of it?”

“I am.”

“Scilabs—”

“Scilabs sanctioned the murder of a sentient being, a living being, a _child_ , Tadashi,” Cossack burst out brusquely before he could finish, his back still turned to Hikari as he stuffed clothes back into his suitcase. The duffel bag at his feet were similarly loaded with necessaries; equipment that wouldn’t get him banned from the airplane, whatever he had been able to take with him in a hurry, two or three rolled up blueprints, an used toothbrush. His voice wasn’t accusing so much as it was weary, devoid of the cheery undertone that was once characteristized the man in the past. “And no, don’t you even start on arguing with me about _technicalities_ now, damn the technicalities. What happened on the day of… They’re calling it ‘the Alpha Revolt’, so the day of the Alpha Revolt then, it was—”

He broke off.

The two scientists stood there, Hikari staring at Cossack's back.

Around them, the sleepy airport still buzzed with pockets of activity as people strolled into coffee shops and got ready for the day ahead. Around them, the world kept turning, spun on its axis and went on.

Finally, the younger programmer turned to look Hikari fully in the face. He said, “Dr. Hikari, your son is alive. He is alive and well, a hearty, bright-minded fellow with his whole future stretching out before him. He is blessed with a wonderful, hard-working wife and your grandchildren are on the way to growing up to be fine, happy boys. I am sure he will do great things with himself. You're right to be proud of him.” Cossack took a slow inhale of dry air, exhaling it just as slowly.

Bags hung heavily under his eyes.

“Your son is alive and mine is not.”

“Mikhail, I...” Hikari stopped himself, his own guilt over the matter slumped around his shoulders like a bag of wet cement. He had not done enough that day over six months ago. He had drastically underestimated how much human beings could hate. He had worried too much and done too little. He had let his caution override his own sense of leneticity. A dozen self-accusations rose to his lips. What could he say to the man? What on earth could you even _say_ to that?

Cossack stood upright and held up a hand, forestalling him from trying.

He said, firmly. “Thank you, but don’t.”

“Alright,” Hikari agreed quite reasonably.

“Forgive me, my old friend, but…” He glanced away, dropped his hand back to his side. The programmer’s hands both trembled with miniature tremors. Not rage. Not hate. Sorrow. Cossack was consumed in his grieving. “It will take some time before I can bring myself to look you in the eye again.”

Hikari said, “There is nothing for me to forgive.”

Cossack turned back to his suitcase and resumed stuffing his belongings back inside. Hikari had a sneaking suspicion that hidden deep under ties and various sets of pants, there were several floppy disks and hard drives the other man had little-to-no legal claim to after resigning from Scilabs, containing whatever data had survived the man’s thorough and permanent purge of all Forte-related information from all Scilab databanks which he really should be confronting Cossack over conducting _right_ before leaving the country.

He couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Nobody had the right to rob a parent of whatever little they had left of their child, or profit, even only intellectually, off said child’s corpse. Personally, Hikari was rather of the opinion that whichever scientists would inevitably raise a fuss over the matter should take themselves out back and put themselves in the dumpster where they belonged.

Or be fired on the spot.

Wistfully, Hikari wished he _could_ do that but his hands were tied. Fire the ones responsible, that is. He couldn’t sack the scientists responsible for the frame-job simply because letting them leave _now_ , when the staff knew too much, was out of the question. Too big of a security risk. And after the destruction the rampant Alpha had wrecked, devouring everything in its path, they needed every set of hands they could get. Hikari feared that the Guardian program he had devised would not prove enough to keep the threat of the mindless beast he had not meant to birth sleeping forever. Steps had to be taken. Precautions had to prepared.

Their saving grace that had stopped the Alpha Revolt from causing irreparable damage to net society was that the Network had only encompassed a few nearby cities and devices; it had gorged itself to sluggishness within a week, then found the bloat of its own bulk had trapped it when inside those limitations.

It had been an easy target to re-capture and force into a dormant state.

Five, seven, ten years down the road—Hikari doubted they’d have such a stroke of luck.

The world would be entirely online by then after all. And with that amount of content plugged into the electronic network, Alpha—no, as long as the precautions were put in place, it would never come to pass. He would not let it threaten the world his grandchildren and their NetNavis would grow up together in.

Hikari would make sure of that.

“The matter of your employment… —” he began.

Cossack laughed, though not at Hikari. How did that old saying go again? “They can’t fire me. I quit. I quit the moment the aftermath of Alpha was taken care of, once I could file out the paperwork. If I hadn’t beaten them to the punch, the other department heads would have done it anyway. You know that.” They threw him in jail so they could get rid of his son and some of them expected him to want to work with them still? No, not even Scilabs’ staff was comprised of such great fools. His voice sounded defeated. “I’m just an unpleasant embarrassment to them now.”

“They’re wrong to treat you like that,” he frowned, incensed at the injustice of it.

“... Ну и что? Они могут думать, что они хотят. It doesn’t matter that much, anymore.”

Hikari sighed. “What will you do now?”

“You know what—” Cossack cut himself off. He gestured at his bags, at their surroundings. “You don’t need me to tell you.”

“Tell me anyway. I _am_ in charge of running the code rebuild and this mess, the reconstruction efforts going into it—in this case, I can’t go gallivanting off to find you like I did when we were younger men to make you'll be relatively alright.”

Cossack’s smile was flat.

“Go back to Sharo. Home. See if there’s anybody in the market for programming. The Sharoian government once expressed an interest in funding my Pulse Transmission project when I was first formulating the idea for it, before... It’s still unfinished. Perhaps I will see if the offer still stands.”

“Mikhail—”

“This is for the best,” He snapped the suitcase shut. He zipped it up and set it upright. “If Scilabs is done with me, it’s best I be done with it as well. I stayed to help solve this incident because I did not wish to have the suffering of more innocents on my conscious due to my own anger. Because I have not forgotten the debt I still owe you, even now. That’s _it_. That’s the sole reason.”

Because his son had been undeserving of his untimely fate and Cossack knew he too had done too little, been too slow to protect him.

Forte was dead and there was nothing he could about it. 

(Why had the parent outlived the child?

That was not how things should go.

Yet, there was Forte, deleted anyway. Forte’s face loomed up in his mind, eyes trusting, eyes accusing, as demanding for an response from him as he had been in life. Why did you let them delete me, отец? was the silent question they asked. And Cossack had no answer. He had made a mistake. He had assumed that eventually people would come to see Forte for the person he is (was), not the possible threat he presented.

And he had been wrong.

It was a bitter pill to swallow.) 

He turned to face Hikari. His weary eyes went up—down—skipped back up again. Cossack let out a huff and stuck out his hand, offering it to the other man. After a moments’ pause, Hikari took it and they shook. The loudspeaker blared and called for all passengers boarding a certain flight to begin boarding.

“Good-bye, Tadashi,” Cossack clasped the older programmer’s hand tightly as the voice on the loudspeaker droned on. After a moment’s pause, slow and unhappy, he released it.

Hikari tried to smile, tired and feeling every single one of his years stacked up atop each other and weighing him down in the marrow of his very bones. He succeeded for a couple of moments. “Good-bye, Mikhail. It was a pleasure working with you, it truly was. I only wish it could have been longer.”

The loudspeaker repeated itself politely, requesting if all passengers planning to board the morning flight to Sharo’s capital city would _please_ proceed immediately with their carry-on baggage to the gate for departure.

Despite himself, that got a wan chuckle from Cossack.

“Same goes for you, you old dog.”

Cossack picked up his suitcase and then hefted up his duffel bag, waved a brief farewell to his older colleague, and walked away.

When the plane, sleek and gleaming in the dawn’s watery light, rumbled out of the gateway towards the long slab of pavement that served as the runaway, Hikari stood alone at the gate’s window to watch it pull away until long after it had cleared the ground altogether and gone out of sight.

 

 

 

(That is the last time Mikhail Cossack and Hikari Tadashi would ever see each other or personally contact one another. Tadashi would die shortly afterwards, of what was diagnosed to be a combination of heart complications from old age and severely compounded stress. He would not live to see the second birthday of his grandchildren.

Mikhail would not attend the funeral.)

**.**

* * *

 

 **.**  

**18.**

In a bleak, empty place, a small virus crept through the rocky crags and ravines. Two pinpoints of red lit its way. Beady eyes darted from side to side, mechanically inching towards its target.

Half-buried in the sand, the black lump remained motionless. The wind blew forlornly against the bruised face, parts of which flickered in and out of solidity, the occasional glitch sending forlorn bits of data floating away into the air. Cracked, fractured, the golden arcs of its fins still swept up from its head. It did not stir.

Prey then.

Even better, prey that showed no signs of fighting back. An easy meal. Food. _Energy_.

It hungered, not like a creature of flesh and bone hungered but hunger all the same. The virus had no self-awareness, no higher functions, no guilt, no emotions. No gears turned behind its beady eyes. To say it even possessed a mind capable of primitive thoughts would be untruthful. It was a set of reactions, dim instinct that only sought to multiply and feed on its prey, no more. It had no concept of either a past that had occurred nor a future that was already on its way. There was only the present moment thoughtlessly flowing on without end nor pause and nothing else.

The virus scuttles forward.

The black shape’s hand smacked down so fast the virus’s armour sprouted a fine web of cracks under the crushing fingers. The virus chattered, too unintelligent to be afraid as bright light shone, engulfing it and—

 

—Forte felt a bit of strength trickle back into his limbs. He groaned and rolled over, grains of digital sand cascading off him and off the dents in his armor where it had collected. Various sections of his body ached in protest, more minor errors and bug reports popping up in his activity logs that he dutifully ignored.

Forte didn’t know how far he’d ran, only that his feet were sore from it. His body was heavy.  

He also couldn’t remember losing consciousness, but it must have happened for him to be regaining it now.

Dull red eyes swiveled about before blearily turning upwards, towards the sky and the rough grime of the boulders hanging suspended miles overhead.

Sand and stone underneath his cheek. Uneven. Rough. By what deranged twist of mind had the humans decided to bother with this level of detail for a damn wasteland? It was only miles and miles of empty network space without end so far as his sensors could tell him, echoing and vast. (What was the point? Why bother? Sand, stone, wind, dust; things of the human world, replicated in the digital realm. _Why bother._ ) But _real_ , something of the here and now, so Forte scratched at it, digging in his fingers to give himself leverage to try and clumsily push himself back up into a sitting position.

Sitting up brought a stab of nausea thumping through his temples.

The endless list of minor demands from his systems, pushed far past their limits, assailed him again at the movement. Ugh. It was an oversight, neglecting to think of snatching any healing programs for himself when he could have. He needed to remember to not repeat that error in the future. It was an oversight on the scientists' parts too, for never thinking to equip their security programs with any to be easily copied. 

Shaking his head to ward the pressure off, Forte stared down at his arm. It trembled still from the effort exerted. 

 _weak_  

His face twisted.

Forte made a fist. Torn through with raggedly gaps, his body was slow to respond. His arm glitched, fading enough that Forte could see through it to the ground below for a moment, then solidified again as his coding struggled to keep his frame together in spite of the damage done. Another faint spasm of pain hit him. Pixels continued to dissolve slowly from the wound on his chest, from all of his wounds. The virus he’d absorbed moments ago had done little to sate that.

Forte growled low in rage, frustrated beyond measure.

Simply put, these viruses were appallingly shoddy. Their programming was crappy, tasteless, and thoroughly unfilling. They were barely even a mouthful. They provided so little substance he would have to absorb hundreds of them before his systems would be ready to integrate them in such a way he could squeeze their energy out with maximum efficiency. He needed materials to stabilize his data since by now his auto-recovery programs were nonresponsive, incapable of compensating for the damage.

 

(If the blow had landed anywhere but the Navi mark, Forte’s auto-recovery programs would have had no trouble handling the healing process, getting him back up on his feet by itself in a matter of days so long as he hadn't engaged in overly strenuous activities.

But landing a direct blow on a Navi mark was _always_ either crippling or a deathblow if no swift counteraction was taken. If they didn’t die instantly, deletion would soon occur as interlocking programs would stop running, malfunctioning at the lack of instruction from the source code, the resulting minor glitches jarring against each other and eating up precious energy in a desperate attempt to make up for the damaged code.

The NetNavi’s data would fall apart in short order.

Forte had survived what should have by all rights killed him, by the combination of two factors: abusing the GetAbility program, and a sheer, bloody-minded _refusal_ to accept the possibility of his own deletion that bordered on outright lunacy.)

 

But consuming viruses alone was not going to cut it.

Forte’s shoulders sagged. The GetAbility was still underdeveloped; a grim realization. In— in— Scilabs, his usage of it had been rare. It was Forte’s own fault. The GetAbility, it hadn’t been his focus. He had utilized it for combat solely during training sessions. Otherwise, the sum of it in his eyes had been an intriguing way to gather data Forte hadn’t bothered to spare the processor space for deep thought on.

At this level, it was not equipped to handle the strain of incorporating this new kind of input. It can only do so much processing before his systems rebel. His creator had never intended for it to be used like this; that man had made it for copying in mind, not forced consumption. It showed.

Forte would have to correct that.

Refine it, make it stronger. His arm, data flecking away at the elbow into the blade—subpar. Unacceptable. Improve it. Couldn’t limit to it just that man’s basics. Somehow. At some point. He had no idea how. He had no idea what to do. _Revenge_ , something inside him hissed. Revenge, closing the wound in his chest, yes, that would all come in time, but how to go about it now? That was the question. What to do, who to attack? Where to go?

Not Scilabs.

How much distance had he put between himself and that place?

He’d been pursued as he fled, Forte knew that much but recollection grew muddled when it came to where he’d managed to get them to lose his trail and how long ago and _who_ —the security programs? The NetPolice? The hordes of viruses that hounded him the deeper into the network he had ran? (And the… gunk? He _thought_ there had been red-orange gunk coming out of the network anyway, oozing and bloated and coating the ceiling and the walls and the floors, patches veining with pulsing circuitry patterns like some grotesque monstrosity. What the hell it might have been, Forte couldn’t be certain anymore than he could be certain it had existed at all. It’d been moving, that red-orange stuff, swelling in strange ways, his head had been swimming and half out of his mind with crazed grief, it was not like he’d been in any fit state to pay any heed to them.)

The overriding brightnesses of terror and fury had pounded it all into a gabbled mush.

He tried to piece together a coherent string of events, tried to _remember_ — 

_pounding screaming fire hurt burning splintering pain how dare you hate hate hate hate hate pain ripping breaking noise pain pain pain pain pain hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE_

**_HATE_ **

—Forte recoiled, jerking away as if he’d accidentally laid his hand against the flat side of a hot iron. He made an inarticulate, strangled noise in his throat. No. No. Not that. No, it was too soon and the wound too fresh. He pushed it away. He turned his mind away from it.

Why was he lying here on his rear in the dirt?

He wasn’t unconscious.

He needed to get up _this instance_.

Fingers on the ground then. Feet set against it. A grunt. _Up_. The pain’s not so bad after a nanosecond or two, because this time Forte already knew the pain was coming no matter what he did and this way, if he couldn't escape it he could brace himself for it. His legs buckle at first so Forte issued an infuriated stream of bitter, rapid-fire complaints under his breath at the state of the frame that kept failing him, and with dust plastering his knees from tripping and introducing his face to the ground quite solidly on a previous occasion, stood up.

Breathing out heavily, Forte scrubbed at the dirt on his face with the back of a hand.

Forte’s eyebrows dipped together.

This wasn’t far enough, the pounding in his head told him. More distance. He had to put more distance between him and those disgusting humans. He had to had to had to _had to_. Didn't want to have to see humans. Or their Navis. Or anyone. Didn't want to see anyone. He turned, one way, then another, seeking landmarks to orient himself. There are none.

In all the directions, the tracts of wasteland that sprawled out before him looked the same.

A big, dusty sprawling load of _nothing_.

Forte scowled, gritted his teeth and seeing no alternative option, picked a direction and started trudging again.

Any direction was fine to Forte, so long as it was not the one he’d came from.

.

* * *

  
.

Hand braced against the stone of the wall to support himself, Forte limped deeper into the blackness of the cramped rift, the echoing sound of his footsteps hurrying ahead of him into it. The circuitry patterns laid into the blocks of stone occasionally sputtered weakly with electricity at erratic intervals. Sand shifted, cool under his boots. The slit in the cliff-face of where desert had given away to the ridges of the chasm was small, the space opening up just slightly more once Forte has squeezed himself further inside it but all that was on his mind was the thought of enclosure out of the bite of the wind, the dust it threw into his eyes.

(The gloom inside doesn’t bother him.

He could see easily through it.

What kind of idiot would shackle a NetNavi with something like imperfect night vision? That implied a failing of the flesh. That implied inferior coding.)

Soon, his hands found a deadend. He could go no further than this.

Fatigue overcame him. His legs folding out from under him, the dregs of his strength spent, Forte sat down, the golden metal of the converters on his back catching and scraping against the stone as he slid down against it. Forte doesn’t care. He was too tired to afford to be picky.

This place was dim and dark and _quiet_. Nobody else, no humans, no others, just him. There was just the one crack of entrance in and out; nobody could sneak up on him, take him unaware.

That was all he can make himself care about.

Forte let his head drop back against the flat rock of the wall with a dull _clunk_ that rang through his skull for a moment, squeezing his eyes closed and shutting out the world. The bleak emotion, sensing an opening, came surging back and he pressed the heels of his palms into his eyelids, _hard_ , until it burnt itself out again and ebbed back to a sullen throb.

Later, he'd venture outside to hunt down what he could. That was later. Forte wasn't thinking about _later_. He didn't want to. He was thinking of lying down and going into sleep mode for as long as he could. Running... His flight from Scilabs had... It. He. The bug reports said nothing was amiss in his memory logs. So. 

He’d...

His lip curled in repulsion.

He’d had to crawl at some points, too weakened to stand, Forte remembered as bits and pieces of his headlong flight from Scilabs came floating back to him.

Rage whistled up through the cracks in his mind.

 

He had bypassed the laboratories' security, staggering as the pain in his chest grew progressively worse and worse and worse, and lashing out wildly to delete every program that hindered his escape. They’d came after him in droves, the ones who'd been too slow to jack out with the rest of the programs, but Forte’s lucidity had been long gone by then and behind him, he had heard—

Bubbling. Oozing. Explosion after explosion, ripping through the cyberscape, and distant shouting. Screaming. All manners of programs, Navis, screaming and screaming and screaming. (Maybe that had been Forte’s imagination.)

Some abomination had been let loose.

And it had been  _fast_. 

Not even once Forte had looked back, abandoning Scilabs to its fate as it had abandoned him to his.

Transferring himself to a gateway and jumping to the nearest landlines to the outside network channels—in another time, in another place, he would have been thankful nobody had thought to hook up the landlines to the Alpha system. Once he’d hit the data flow of a wireless connection that was _still_ functioning, some automatic survival routine had taken hold, the blind panicked instinct of self-preservation driving Forte up from the landlines and away.

He'd  _ran_.

Down through layer after layer of networks stacked atop each other like the layers of an intricate pastry, down through the firewalls, past private network sectors, through the chaotic riot of public hubs, down and down and _down_ , and at some point, he must have dragged himself out into the outermost reaches of the network.

At first, Forte had went as far and as fast as he could, and muscles burning, eyes burning, he’d slowed to a half-jog, half-limp only as the damage to his core program drank away his energy. His pace had flagged with every step he took, dropped to a walk and then to a crawl.

 _How_  his own weakness had rankled Forte.

(How it shamed him, to know he could be made weak by others. And the slime-sour taste of that shame in his mouth angered him too.)

He’d crawled away on his hands and knees, dragging himself forward and every inch of the way he’d hated it and hated whose who had reduced him to such a state he had to do it; too weak to stand, too weak to _fight_ , weak weak weak they’re laughing at you weak weak, if anybody sees your weakness now they’ll delete you—delete delete delete delete delete— and what can you do about it. He could hear the security programs laughing at him still.

Forte loathed them all.

 

—What he felt now: the urge to ease the ache, to appease what was a white-hot furnace of rage burning and roiling and seething underneath, lit in his belly, not breaking the surface but threatening to. He needed. He. He needed it. So badly he couldn’t stand the thought of not getting it.

Forte opened his eyes again.

He sat in silence for a short while, feeling twisted up and confused and miserable and small and used and heartsick and _absolutely furious_.

(What he had left—a wound and the ache that howled for satisfaction.

Well, that would have to do.

He was going to repay the burn of that ache a thousandfold if Forte had any say in it. He was going to find every single piece of human filth responsible for this pain, and he was going to take his time, and he was going to wrap his bare hands around their soft, fleshy necks, and he was going to delete them all. It didn't matter if they existed in two separate worlds, he and the humans. Didn't matter at all. He would. _He would_.)

.

* * *

 

.

He touched his wound and for the first time, really stopped to examine it.

It was a massive gash that stretched from just above his hip to his shoulder, wide enough one could have fit the fingertips of both hands inside it. Inside it, where Forte could see the pulsing blue-purple glow of exposed circuit patterns, algorithms so intricate as to be art, complex lines of light and data. This was him, laid open. Lines of code, compiled programming. That was what makes up him; Forte could see inside himself.

Disgusted and fascinated by it, Forte prodded at it, feeling its unfamiliar shape, feeling the resulting throb of pain that scalded through him but not actually registering it.

It ached.

Data particles still occasionally drifted out of the crack in his frame, no longer the uncontrollable, agonizing rush of data it had been in the beginning, when it had first sprayed into the air and bled out of him. Over time, as his auto-recovery systems belatedly kicked back in and the material the viruses he consumed provided was more properly processed, it should knit closed and shrink in size, pulling itself into a scar and retreating from his shoulder and hip to an indent cutting across his chest emblem.

The black NetNavi ran his hand over it, lost in thought.

If the blade had gone any deeper, if it had scraped an inch too far down—it would have hit his core programs, heavily damaging them, perhaps beyond repair. His personality. His self. His memory files. Gone. Deleted. He would have stopped existing.

And Cossack hadn't backed up—his thoughts slammed up to a halt at that name, echoing loud and long in his mind.

 _Cossack_.

Forte bit down on the inside of his mouth.

The last he had seen of the man was Cossack smiling down at him from the data window before he left the laboratories for the evening, smiling even as he must have been tossing him aside as the failed experiment he was, and this was the image that remained with him: Cossack smiling in deception down at him, a silhouette cloaked in black, a voice, discarding him, betraying him. 

A voice.

(The first voice Forte had ever heard. The one voice he had wanted to hear when left to the mercy of the other humans.)

The memory files of all those times with Cossack are no help. In fact, they make the ache worsen the more he looked at them; the knowledge that said _betrayal_ tarnished them. Forte looked at them anyway: his enthusiastic responses that now made his stomach curdle in rage, and Cossack's warm interest that now seemed the worst of farces. His fatherly pride. His concern. His love. Searching. Searching for the signs that _must_ have been there, the signs that he had... inexplicably failed to notice, something to pinpoint as the beginning of the end. The moment when that love degraded and became hollow enough his creator would discard him so thoroughly that the man didn't even bother to personally show up for his deletion. 

He’d thought he’d been loved, and it turned out that he had not. There had to be an explanation.

Had he failed to measure up? Had there been some test that he'd been ignorant of which he performed insufficiently on? Some kind of grounds for this treatment? There had to be an explanation.

But there is nothing.

No answers, no explanation. Just bewilderment and a sense of hurt filling him, _how could—how dare his creator treat him like this?_

Cossack's smiles seemed genuine when he recalled them, the worry un-feigned.

There aren't any slip-ups, any little tells, any moments where his actions could have possibly contradicted the message that he telegraphed to Forte: care and warmth and kind concern for him, and trust and joy in him. Forte doesn't understand it. He cannot make sense of faulty data. Cannot make sense of humans. The only logical conclusion he can reach is that his creator was such a frightfully good liar that any attempts to distinguish what was truth and what was lies was bound to be fruitless when it came to him, and he should simply accept the fact Cossack didn't care about him. Had never, probably, cared about him.

He wouldn’t—didn't want to believe it.

Because that made all the affection he'd ever felt for another person one-sided, obsolete, an exercise in meaninglessness. Because there is no greater fool than a person that cares when the other does not. Because it underdetermined everything he knew to be true in the universe.

It wasn’t _fair_.

It was infuriating. Humiliating on some base level. It was a betrayal that stung—violation on a scale humans could never comprehend.

Forte wanted—something. He wanted to break something, scream, beat his fists against the ground, destroy his surroundings all at once. He did none of these things. He wanted to refuse to accept it, rage against a reality that demanded that he face the facts. The world that stood against him, the humans who feared him, the humans who used him, the netnavis too weak to be equal of him, the netnavis who had scorned him, the people who lied to him. He wanted to go back to the time when his creator's love was a thing he took for granted.

But that love was a lie, said the gash slashed across his chest.

To hell with that then.

He would have no part of it.

And if those security programs had been wrong, if they had been the liars and not Cossack—well, why hadn’t Cossack come back to look—Forte's thoughts swirled about in a frenzy. Why had he not intervened that day, not once? Why had he stood by, silent. He hadn't been the one locked away. His level of security clearance had been second only to Hikari in the laboratories. Forte had _waited_ for him. He'd needed him. He was his creator; he'd said Forte was his _son_. What kind of creator left his son out in the cold to face extermination? If this was some kind of misunderstanding, the man should be tearing apart the network looking for him. He should be ransacking every hub and chasing down every lead. Dr. Cossack should be trying to contact him.

... Cossack should have at least tried by now.

If he hadn’t (and he hasn’t, it’s been hours-days-weeks-and-weeks-and-weeks-and-weeks since _that day_ and he has seen neither hide nor hair of the human) Forte knew Dr. Cossack truly didn’t care.

That smarted a little.

He refused to crave a lie.

That was a level Forte wouldn't stoop to.

Forte's foundation for how he interpreted the world was gone. If he could not rearrange the universe to his liking, he would have to rearrange his outlook because to neglect to do so was to die, was to fail to adapt; was to leave himself vulnerable.

He closed that road.

 


End file.
